Talk:Finagle's law

Comments
so who was it that added the corollory to Murphy's or Finagle's law which states: "Murphy/Finagle was an optimist"
 * Supposedly O'Toole, according to Arthur Bloch in his widely-read Murphy's Law compednium. Ellsworth 00:12, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

moved from the article

 * But a serious philosopher, referring to sociological aspects of the law, has noted the possibilities of Murphy acting on Finagle ensuring a positive outcome.

Which serious philosopher? This sounds weird phrased like that. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93;   12:04, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What's the diff?
Color me clueless, but I don't see the difference between Murphy's Law and Finagle's. --Jay (Histrion) 15:27, 14 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I don't either, I think they should be merged. I don't know how to do that though, so I guess I'm useless.--TrogdorTSL 23:33, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I think Murphy's law is the much better known, so this should be subsumed under Murphy's. - Oreo Priest  21:01, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I believe murphy's, finagles and sods law should be merged into one article

I agree. The article begins with the phrase: Finagle's corollary to Murphy's Law. Corollary is defined in Random House (dictionary.com) as: 1.	Mathematics. a proposition that is incidentally proved in proving another proposition. 2.	an immediate consequence or easily drawn conclusion. 3.	a natural consequence or result. By its own definition Finagle's law isn't a law at all but a corollary and should be merged with that of the great Murphy :) LookingGlass (talk) 11:42, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

The difference is that Murphy's Law is (or was originally) supposedly much more specific than what most people cite as "Murphy's Law". What most people call Murphy's Law is actually Finagle's Law, and despite the name, Finagle's Law doesn't follow from the specific version of Murphy's Law. On the other hand, the Murphy's Law article is already about Finagle's Law, and the original statement of Murphy's Law is now little more than a footnote in the public mind. In a non-sequitur, Hanlon's Razor has little or nothing to do with Murphy, Finagle, or either of their Laws, so I'm going to take that out.

There are at least two other versions of Finagle's law; one very similar to what you are discussing is the perversity of inanimate objects. When I saw this posted on the Chemistry board at college, it included a list of practical examples, one of my favorites being "A malfunctioning piece of equipment works perfectly in the presence of a trained technician". I found this on this on the internet, which is similar: https://www.calebandlindapirtle.com/were-all-victims-of-finagles-law-the-authors-collection/ The second version, less similar, but in the same spirit, are Finagle's Laws (note the plural) "discovered by the late, great Erich von Finagle, in the course of his attempt to prove that if a string has one end, it must have at least one other". (I mutter this to myself when my threads are snarled.) The one that has stuck with me the most is "First draw your lines, then plot your points"  Here's an example of such a list: https://stroppyrabbit.blogspot.com/2010/01/finagles-laws.htmlJugliz25A (talk) 05:19, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Proginoskes (talk) 16:19, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Terry's Corollary to Murphy's Law
(1) If it is supposed to work, it probably won't.  (2) If it absolutely must work, it definitely won't.   (3) If your job depends on it working, find other employment.

Terryallan 18:29, 4 October 2007 (UTC) As one who [mis]spent my youth [and a lot of money] with Astounding [later Analog] I learned of Finnagle, in  enough detail to create an appendix to a textbook an instructor was writing. For some time in the early '60s people wrote in information which John Campbell included in the Letters section, including the information that Murphy was Finnagle's lab assistant and responsible for many of the more practical laws. Incidentally, the last line of the text in the article is wrong; "Finagle [sic] factor", also known as "Finnagle's Variable Constant", is only the additive term. The multiplicative term is the "Bugger Factor" [originally Bougerre,an associate of Dr von Nagle {and I may have spelled his name wrong], second order term was the Fiddle Coefficient, and the following terms made up an equation which rendered the whole thing meaningless. Incidentally, Dr. von Nagle, his true name, was forced to change his name to Sean Finnagle in conjunction to a move from his native Austria followinf some trouble over a bullet-proof vest for the Archduke Ferdinand. I wish I could cite the sources for this information, bbut grandmothers have little respect for paperback 'trash".Fred Ewing (talk) 18:49, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Origin of the name, "Finagle's Law"?
Does anyone know how "Finagle's Law" came to be called Finagle's Law? Was it a wry, humorous application of the verb, to finagle? As far as Finagle's Factor goes, I read that one once in a list of Murphy's Law corollaries, as "Flannigan's Finagling Factor" (again, the use of "finagle"), also called "Skinner's Constant", and defined as, "that value, when added to, subtracted from, multiplied by, or divided into your answer, gives you the answer you should have gotten."TheBaron0530 (talk) 14:05, 10 October 2023 (UTC)