Named Laws & Numbers

Laws, hypotheses, and numbers that turn up in polite conversation:

  • Amara’s Law: The notion that we tend to overestimate the effect of technology in the short run and underestimate it in the long run.

  • Brook’s Law: Adding manpower to a late project makes it later.

  • Conway’s Law: The principle that the structure of a software system will reflect the structure of the organization that created it.

  • Dunbar’s Number: The suggested cognitive limit to the number of stable social relationships a person can have, proposed by Robin Dunbar to be around

  • Dunning-Kruger Effect: The cognitive bias that people with low ability tend to overestimate their competence.

  • Godwin’s Law: The adage that if an online discussion grows long enough, the probability of a comparison to Hitler or Nazis approaches 1.

  • Goodhart’s Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

  • Hanlon’s Razor: The saying to not attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

  • Hick’s Law: The time to make a decision increases with the number of choices.

  • Kurzweil’s Law (“Law of Accelerating Returns”): The observation that the rate of change in technology tends to increase exponentially over time.

  • Metcalfe’s Law: The idea that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users.

  • Moore’s Law: The observation that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years.

  • Occam’s Razor: The problem solving principle to prefer the simplest explanation that fits the available evidence.

  • Pareto Principle: The common pattern that 80% of outcomes come from 20% of causes.

  • Parkinson’s Law: The adage that work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

  • Peter Principle: That employees are promoted (based on success in their current role) until they reach a level of incompetence.

  • Reed’s Law: The principle that the utility of large networks, like social networks, scales exponentially with the size of the network.

  • Sapir-Worf Hypothesis: The linguistic theory that the structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers are able to conceptualize their world.

  • Zipf’s Law: The pattern that the frequency of an event is inversely proportional to its rank.