Front-Door Murphy's Law

The Wikipedia page for Murphy's law (I have been obsessed with Wikipedia lately) casually drops a beautifully apt adage, one so well-constructed that it distances itself from the rue of its statement: "The perceived perversity of the universe has long been a subject of comment". 

Murphy's law, of course, is the aphorism suggesting that whatever can go wrong, will. We can immediately discredit Murphy's law by pointing out that sometimes things go right, and thus, whatever can go wrong does not always. Anyway, my qualm is not with the "perceived perversity of the universe" (underline mine), but just the perceived perversity of my front door lock. As such, perhaps this should be called "Front-Door Resistentialism", that last word being one coined by Paul Jennings in a 23 April 1948 article for The Spectator. It refers (humourously, parodying existentialism) to the phenomenon of inanimate objects acting spitefully towards oneself, making inopportune things happen just when you don't need them to. The cruelty of Things, as Jennings capitalises. But Front-Door Murphy's Law has assonance on its side, and thus it reigns as the title of this blog post.

The cruelty of my front door lies in it the duplicity of its locks. I live in a house that is split in to a few different flats, and thus there is a lot of comings and goings through the front door. Now, the first lock is the one that most people lock, whereas the second lock, for added security, is only used by some of us. (I will leave you to surmise how my lackadaisical quality manifests in my philosophy about locking that second lock.) Now, this second lock, which is not always locked, is unlike the main lock in that it requires the key to unlock, even from inside. Say lock (or lack) again, Sa. If that second lock is locked, then I will have to rummage about in my bag for my keys, get them out, and spend an extra 30 seconds unlocking the door. 30 seconds is a long time when you are in a rush, and it seems that every time (and often, only when) I am in a rush, the second lock will be locked: front-door Murphy's law.

I have thus done what any normal person would do, which was start a log of every time I've left the house over 2 weeks, noting whether or not I was in a rush, and whether or not the second lock was locked. This way, I can see whether or not this Resistentialism is in fact just confirmation or selection bias, which, let's be real, it probably is, given that I am (reluctantly) Human.

Date	Time	In a rush?	Door locked?
REDACTED	REDACTED	Yes	Yes
REDACTED	REDACTED	No	No
REDACTED	REDACTED	No	No
REDACTED	REDACTED	No	No
REDACTED	REDACTED	No	No
REDACTED	REDACTED	Yes	No
REDACTED	REDACTED	Yes	No
REDACTED	REDACTED	Yes	No
REDACTED	REDACTED	No	No
REDACTED	REDACTED	No	No
REDACTED	REDACTED	No	No
REDACTED	REDACTED	No	Yes
REDACTED	REDACTED	Yes	Yes
REDACTED	REDACTED	Yes	Yes
REDACTED	REDACTED	No	Yes
REDACTED	REDACTED	Yes	Yes
REDACTED	REDACTED	Yes	No
REDACTED	REDACTED	No	Yes
REDACTED	REDACTED	No	No
REDACTED	REDACTED	No	Yes
REDACTED	REDACTED	No	Yes
REDACTED	REDACTED	No	No
REDACTED	REDACTED	No	No
REDACTED	REDACTED	No	No
REDACTED	REDACTED	No	No
REDACTED	REDACTED	No	No
REDACTED	REDACTED	No	No
REDACTED	REDACTED	No	No
REDACTED	REDACTED	No	No

Interestingly, another Murphy's law manifested itself in the recording of this log: I magically seemed, in this period of logging my comings and goings, to be in a rush far less than usual, reducing my sample size for that subset. I was also going to make my recording period a month, but then I went on holiday for a week and ruined the continuity, and also, recording the date, time, rushed or unrushed nature of your exit, and the corresponding locked or unlocked nature of the door got really fucking annoying, particularly when I was in a rush.

This leads me to another potential flaw of my recordings: I was less likely to remember to record these things when I was in a rush, being distracted by my lateness. This could have led to a bit of under-reporting when I was in a rush. However, I'm pretty sure that I remembered to record every single time I left the house in those 2 weeks, fingers crossed, at least.

Now let's get to the calculations.

Times in a rush: 8 / 29

Times not in a rush: 21 / 29

Times door locked: 9 / 29

Times door unlocked: 20 / 29

Not in a rush + door unlocked: 16 / 21 = 76.2%

Not in a rush + door locked: 5 / 21 = 23.8%

In a rush + door unlocked: 4/8 = 50%

In a rush + door locked: 4/8 = 50%

I never took any stats courses at uni - none were even mandatory for my science degree, when I feel like it could have been very helpful. Anything I know about stats I've just learnt from reading. So if I am fallacious at any point or just not analysing the data correctly, please let me know. But here's my analysis.

So, you could say: look. When you were in a rush, Sa, it was only locked 50% of the time. So it's equally likely and unlikely that the door will be locked when you're in a rush. HOWEVER, I retort. Let's look at it this way. When I am not in a rush, the likelihood of the door being locked is 23.8%, but when I am in a rush, the likelihood more than doubles to 50%. So the door IS more often locked when I am in a rush!! Murphy, whoever he is (this is not entirely known to people who study these things), may not have full force on the fate of the universe, but we do feel his influence, in that jump from 23.8 to 50. Or, you know, my sample size was just far too small.

The subjectivity of statistics in this way really unnerves me. That is, if they are subjective, and I'm not just too unlearned in the field. When I was very young, I had this debate with my dad. I asked him if, given the multiple flights he took weekly, he was scared of plane crashes. He said no, because even though he travels a lot, the likelihood based on plane crash statistics that that particular plane was going to go down was very, very low. His argument was that the likelihood was 0.0x%. I thought he should have been more scared, because given his travel frequency, the likelihood that he would crash at some point in his life was 0.0x + 0.0x + 0.0x ..........., or y(0.0x), y being the number of flights he took, and being a very large number. I looked at the stats of his life, but he chose to look at the stats of one flight at a time. Was one of us right? Were we both right? I don't know, but he's alive, crashless, through he did witness a plane in Bangkok hit the ground and burst into flames on the tarmac right next to the plane he was in.