Littlewood’s Law of Miracles

2. Explain Littlewood’s Law of miracles and how it can explain extraordinary phenomena. Be sure to give two examples of it.

Littlewood’s law of miracles is a calculated theory that describes how many times we will be able to encounter a miracle in a given period of time. The short version of this theory may be found on Wikipedia which is nicely written as follows: “Littlewood defines a miracle as an exceptional event of special significance occurring at a frequency of one in a million. He assumes that during the hours in which a human is awake and alert, a human will experience one event per second, which may be either exceptional or unexceptional (for instance, seeing the computer screen, the keyboard, the mouse, this article, etc.). Additionally, Littlewood supposes that a human is alert for about eight hours per day.

As a result a human will in 35 days have experienced under these suppositions about one million events. Accepting this definition of a miracle, one can be expected to observe one miraculous occurrence within the passing of every 35 consecutive days – and therefore, according to this reasoning, seemingly miraculous events are actually commonplace.” With Littlewood’s reasoning, we can conclude that on average, we will experience one miracle per month.  

One interesting example is the one portray in the short video, “Voodoo Voodoo.” The story is that Prof. Lane and his family was on a much needed vacation. The oceans were flat, very nice scenery with great company as described in the video. Prof. Lane and his son decided to go surfing, but were disappointed to see that the ocean was calm, not showing any sign of great waves. Recalling his childhood, Prof. Lane decides to teach his son about a chant that he performed with his childhood friends which every time they chanted, would grant them with enormous ocean waves. After they chanted, they were able to experience an incredible wave that astonished them both. Believing that this voodoo trick is true, his son asked for one more chant. Being skeptical, Prof. Lane followed along and chanted with his son once again. Who could have thought, another enormous wave came right after the chant was over! What are the odds of getting two ginormous waves in a flat ocean? I would say slim to none. The very fact that they were able to experience these “miracles” is an example of the Law of miracles.

Another interesting personal example is when I was the bowling alley. As a junior high student and without any experience of bowling, I went along with my fellow childhood friends to go bowling for the first time. Without any expectation, I crossed my fingers on my first try. Who could have thought, I bowled a perfect strike! It was as if I won the lottery, full of excitement and joy. The next two times that I bowled, I crossed my fingers and once again, I was able to strike three times in a row. With amazement I was able to experience three miracles in a row.

 Having called for enormous waves, or being able to strike so many times may be more than one miracle, at the same time and to the same exact person. This may also be just a random occurrence of sequential events. Maybe those waves were also called for while they were chanting out loud. Perhaps I had hidden talents that I never knew. We never know how miracles will actually happen.

The interesting thing about miracles is that we tend to only remember the “hits” rather than all of the other “misses.” By “hits” I am trying to say when miracles actually do happen. For instance, people at casinos tend to rely on luck for their “hits” in winning money at slot machines. Because they only remember the times that they have won, they are forced to forget about all those times that they did not win; only looking forward to the eventual “hit” they are going to experience. It is quite interesting to see that because of the fact that we can only see the good things happening, we will forget about the bad things, in this case losing money, and pursue after the miracles. I believe that this type of mindset will lead people into dependence on miracles, which will help them continue in their journey of life.