The law of averages is a lay term used to express a belief that outcomes of a random event will "even out" within a small sample.
As invoked in everyday life, the "law" usually reflects bad statistics or wishful thinking rather than any mathematical principle. While there is a real theorem that a random variable will reflect its underlying probability over a very large sample, the law of averages typically assumes that unnatural short-term "balance" must occur. Typical applications of the law also generally assume no bias in the underlying probability distribution, which is frequently at odds with the empirical evidence.
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Famous quotes containing the words law of and/or law:
“All men, in the abstract, are just and good; what hinders them, in the particular, is, the momentary predominance of the finite and individual over the general truth. The condition of our incarnation in a private self, seems to be, a perpetual tendency to prefer the private law, to obey the private impulse, to the exclusion of the law of the universal being.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It seems to be a law in American life that whatever enriches us anywhere except in the wallet inevitably becomes uneconomic.”
—Russell Baker (b. 1925)