Marty Stepp

Wikipedia has a great page about eponymous laws, that is, laws named for somebody.  It’s a great read:

Wikipedia: Eponymous Laws

The classic example is Murphy’s Law: Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.  CS majors probably know about these:

• Amdahl’s Law: Related to speedup of a system as a single component is improved (often used when talking about parallel or multi-processor upgrades).
• De Morgan’s Laws: Rules that govern logical/Boolean expressions.
• Moore’s Law: The complexity of integrated circuits doubles every 18-24 months.

Did you know about these?

• Benford’s Law: In many systems, there is a logarithmic distribution of leading digits; 1 is most frequent, followed by 2, etc.
• Brooks’ Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
• Godwin’s Law: Every internet argument will eventually escalate to the point that someone makes reference to Hitler and Nazism.
• Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
• Hofstadter’s Law: Things always take longer than you expect, even if you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.
• Keynes’ Law: Demand creates its own supply.
• Muphry’s Law: If you write an internet message / email criticizing somebody’s spelling or grammar, you will also make a spelling or grammar error in your message.
• Occam’s Razor: When two explanations are offered for a phenomenon, the simplest full explanation is preferable.
• Parkinson’s Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
• Peter Principle: In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
• Sturgeon’s Revelation: 90 percent of everything is crap.
• Wirth’s Law: Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster.