Greg Can't Spell

Parkinson’s Law: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

Wadsworth Constant: The constant is 30 percent, which is alleged to be the portion of an Internet video that can be skipped at the beginning without missing anything important.

Mooers’ Law: An information retrieval system will tend not to be used whenever it is more painful and troublesome for a customer to have information than for him/her not to have it.

Hick’s Law: Describes the time it takes for a person to make a decision as a result of the possible choices he or she has. The more options someone has, the longer it takes for decisions to be made.

Gall’s Law: A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work; you have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.

Brook’s Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes the project delivered later. Often people assume that adding more people late to a project will cause the project to speed up, but the ramp-up time for initiating someone to the project, as well as the change in communication dynamics often causes the opposite to be true.

Amara’s Law: We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.

Dunbar’s Number: The maximum amount of stable, social connections someone can sustain. While there is no definitive number, most people estimate this number to be around 150. This number was identified by Robin Dubar in 1992, but it is interesting to reflect on this number with the rise of connections people have made through social media channels like Facebook and Twitter.

Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.

Segal’s Law: A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure. In other words, conflicting info adds another layer of confusion.

Sowa’s Law: Whenever a major organization develops a new system as an official standard for X, the primary result is the widespread adoption of some simpler system as a de facto standard for X.