Talk:Littlewood's law

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 Exemplar Sententia. 04:05, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  The latter sentence above is complete non-sense. The source via which you access an article is completely irrelevant to the comments you may/should leave.130.225.20.24 (talk) 18:40, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  The first sentence, however, makes perfect sense. Moreover, almost every submission on this page seems to assume that Littlewood's law is a mathematical theorem, rather than a joke with a serious undertone. Although one might think that this should not be necessary, it appears that perhaps this should be pointed out in the article. AlexFekken (talk) 03:46, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Talk Page guidlines 

message: Littlewood's Law supposes these miracles to happen individually? Perhaps a more in depth explanation is due, seems like questionable math to me. I'd also be interested in hearing some examples of these so-called miracles if Littlewood acknowledges their existence.
Caarth 06:01, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definition? 

message: I'm no mathematician, but as explained it seems deeply flawed. To work that way, wouldn't each of the 1,000,000 "events" have to be completely independent, not causally linked to one another as actual experiences are? If I'm in my room at instant A, alone, with the door closed, unmiraculously reading a book, surely the likelihood of something "miraculous" happening within my realm of experience at instant A+1 is next to nil, since I'm (practically speaking) in a small, closed system with a limited number of physical objects whose properties (other than those of me myself) are highly static and predictable. - 65.213.77.129 (talk) 20:37, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: i suppose that is covered by saying 'the average person', as opposed to specifying hermits who never leave their rooms.  i suppose he could specify it as only applying to people who experience things.  however, even in your self-described isolation booth, there are still millions of possible miracles that could occur.  you just naturally reject their likelihood because they are, after all, miraculous. --65.31.193.126 (talk) 23:59, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

text: The real dodgy probability is the definition - aside from 1:1000000 odds being kind of low for miracles, saying something has 1:1000000 odds doesn't mean that it occurs every 1000000 otherwise independent events in a persons' life: it means when you try to accomplish it, you fail 999999 times out a 1000000. The law of really big numbers still makes his larger point, but this "law" and the monthly rate is just arguing from misleading definition. -114.91.64.248 (talk) 01:12, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Er... it is not our place to criticise Littlewood's concept of a miracle. If reliable sources exist that detail such a critique, then use those in the article. Fences and windows (talk) 17:58, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dodgy Probabilistics? 

message: The preamble to the article states that this "law" was "framed by... Littlewood in 1986." However, Littlewood died nine years earlier in 1977. Perhaps whoever wrote this meant that the "framing" or publication was posthumous. Whatever the intended meaning of the sentence is, I think some clarification is needed.
GibbNotGibbs (talk) 11:41, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Year in preamble. Littlewood died in 1977.