新标准大学英语三unit7PPT.ppt

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Can bad luck be explained?
Can bad luck be explained?
1 Toast always lands butter side down. It always rains on bank holidays. You never win the lottery, but other people you know seem to ... Do you ever get the impression that you were born unlucky? Even the most rational person can be convinced at times that there is a force out there making mishaps occur at the worst possible time. We all like to believe that Murphy's Law is true (“if it can go wrong, it will”).
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2 Part of the explanation for bad luck is mathematical, but part is psychological. Indeed there is a very close connection between people's perception of bad luck and interesting coincidences.
3 For example, take the belief that “bad things always happen in threes”(just like buses ...!) This popular notion would be unlikely to stand the scrutiny of any scientific study, but it must have some basis in experience, otherwise the phrase would never have arisen in the first place. What might be the rational explanation?
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4 The first question is “what is bad?”
5 Some things are only marginally bad, for example the train arriving five minutes late. Some are extremely bad, such as failing an exam or being sacked. So badness is much better represented as being on a spectrum rather than something which is there or not there.
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6 A particular event may only be a misfortune because of the circumstances around it. The train arriving five minutes late is a neutral event if you are in no hurry and reading an interesting newspaper article while you wait. It is bad if you are late for an important meeting.
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7 When es to bad things happening in threes, what may be most important of all is the duration and memorability of the first event. Take a burst pipe while you are away on holiday, for example. It may take less than an hour to flood the house, but this one bad event can remain alive and kicking for many months, with the cleaning up operation and the debate with your insurers acting as c