Impulse

Everyone lives under the prob­a­bil­ity that some­thing really bad may hap­pen — say, for exam­ple, a hard drive fail­ing spec­tac­u­larly. Let’s call this prob­a­bil­ity F for the first word that usu­ally comes to mind in these situations.

Being a par­tic­u­larly tech­ni­cal guy, I do a lot of things uncon­sciously that pre­vent cat­a­strophic fail­ures, so I’ve come to feel that my value of F is smaller than most peo­ple. It gives me a sense of accom­plish­ment and pride. The great num­ber of com­put­ers in my house, all in per­fect work­ing order, fur­ther inflates my ego. My F is very small indeed!
But, math doesn’t work like that as Dr. Murphy would agree. Creeping stealth­ily through my house, Math knows that F is F no mat­ter what you name is. It sees the lit­tle ghostly Fs float­ing above each com­puter, each hard drive. Math grins mali­ciously know­ing that the like­li­hood of its wrath being vis­ited upon my house is not just F, but the sum of all those Fs. (cue light­ning) As Math waits patiently, my 13 hard dri­ves spin out 13 times the prob­a­bil­ity for fail­ure as the sim­ple techno­phobe next door.
“I think,” it says. “He is due.”