Mathematical odds
Do the odds of labor increase with the inconvenience factor? Jeremy and Brian are renting a van to move furniture down to Norton today. Ideally we would like him to complete this task before the arrival of the baby. Murphy’s law says that labor will start at the most inconvenient time, so that would put him mid-move somewhere.
Is there a formula for this type of math?
Fellow math teachers?
Steve L? Gary H?
Anyone… ?
3:37 Update: Jeremy suggested that I include a shot of Calle helping him pick up the aforementioned moving van. She’s quite the copilot and apparently was able to back into the driveway without hitting the fence post. Great job Calle!
Calle in the moving van. She stayed home with me for the actual trip to Norton.
- Posted in: Uncategorized ♦ Calle ♦ probability
Funny you should ask me a question today – I just today discovered this blog!
25 years of ham radio and 25 other years of computer programming have certainly made me familiar with Murphy’s Law. However, the Law is an emergent phenomenon generated by the chaos of 6 billion people and innumerable animals all pursuing wildly conflicting personal agendas that are not synchronized in any way. Emergent phenomena are intrinsically unpredictable within useful error bounds; the formula contains an estimate and weight for the probability of every potentially relevant event. Therefore, your intuition that you should do what you can to cause your labor to begin at a convenient time, seems to me the most effective strategy.
Lisa derided me rather scorchingly (she called me superstitious, for FSM’s sake!) for suggesting this, but I remember what brought on her labor, and it was eating pizza. When apprised of this juxtaposition, a close friend at the time, who was a nurse, said “Ah ha, of course!” and proposed a – let’s call it “conjecture” – that oregano and/or garlic have oxytocin-like effects.
That said, be careful how you time this. Consider that from onset, 24 hours of labor are not unheard of (Lisa’s started at 2 am and Ariel arrived at 8 pm).
Just to be sure, FSM = Flying Spaghetti Monster, yes?
I have been eating garlic on a regular basis and recently in conjunction with oregano, but any excuse for pizza is a good one! Today I was advised to go the spicy route by my prenatal yoga teacher. She said she and others have had luck with that approach. So I will conjecture that whatever someone was eating just before they went into labor becomes the food they recommend to others to facilitate labor. That said, as my due date (3/9) approaches and *shudder* maybe even passes the probability that labor will commence increases regardless of what I eat or do. However it’s fun to think that perhaps I can change the odds through actions that have absolutely no impact on my physiology.
Yes, that’s the deity to whom I was appealing. (I find it hard to reach a funny emphasis level without invoking one.)
I suppose it’s natural that the meal a mom ate just before labor started is blamed/thanked – though it’s a “precedes implies causes” fallacy. Hmmm… apart from various gastric reactions, I can’t think of anything else that’s routinely attributed to something one recently ate. There are candidates. For example, fish is supposedly brain food – but upon being complimented for a good idea, have you ever heard anyone credit seafood?
More seriously, once you’re nursing, there is no question that whatever you consume goes rapidly to your beloved little parasite. Ask Lisa to tell you the “postpartum iron supplement” story.