Name______Date______Period______
Good Karma, Bad Thinking
Burger, Edward B. & Starbird, Michael. Coincidences, Chaos, and All That Math Jazz. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2005. 11-12.
Some people believe they enjoy incredible “parking karma”: they can drive up to a theater just minutes before show time and always find a parking spot right by the entrance. Others feel that they suffer from a malady known as bad-checkout-line karma: they always pick the slowest line at the grocery store or the slowest line at the highway toll plaza. A variation can be found at stoplights. Why do some of us hit all the red lights when we’re in a rush? Are there impish auto angels straddling our hood ornaments who clear parking places as needed for deserving drivers and turn the lights red for the rest of us?
As much as we might want to believe in that fanciful image, the actual explanation is much more mundane and karma-free. In reality, we all choose the slow lines about as often as anyone else, and we are all lucky sometimes. What differs is which kind of event we remember.
Suppose, for example, we are sitting in along line watching all the other lines flow through the tollbooths like rivers, while driver after driver in front of us parks in the lane and feels around under the seats in search of that needed nickel. During these long delays we have plenty of time to sit, think, and, in the case of many of us, mutter inappropriate expletives. That leisure gives our brains time to burn that unpleasant experience into our memory. That’s where the bad karma comes in. But when we zoom through the line without any hesitation at all, it’s so fast that most of us don’t even notice and thus miss the opportunity to celebrate the good luck we’ve just enjoyed. Those of us who tend toward pessimism or self-pity remember the wait times and feel caught in the grip of bad-checkout-line karma; the lucky few who are optimistic remember the triumphant moments and bask in the illusion of good karma. The bottom line is that there is an amazing parking spot with your name on it, right by the door…every once in a while.
Bad-elevator karma, however, is a different story. Suppose we work on the third floor of a twenty-story building and regularly take the elevator to the seventeenth floor to flirt with an attractive executive. It’s annoying that the first elevator that arrives at our floor is almost always going down. Bad karma? Not really; it’s simple that there are more floors above us than below, so that’s where the elevators are more likely to be. When an elevator gets to the third floor, it typically will be coming from one of the many higher floors, heading down to drop off its passengers in the lobby. So this bad-elevator karma is neither an illusion nor karma.
A little solid reasoning is usually more reliable than riding the ups and downs of mystical influences. It’s remarkable how many seemingly inexplicable phenomena can be moved into the “Aha! I see it now!” category when you do the math. Some people may see the trade-off as undesirable: they feel they’re giving up something mysterious, inexplicable, and wonderful in exchange for simple, boring, everyday reasoning. Not to worry—there’s plenty of real mystery left in the world.
What is the main idea of this article?
______
______
Why did the author write it?
______
______
What did the author want you to learn?
______
______
Describe from the article, the following:
Claim(s) -- Claims are not facts but rather conclusions that the writer draws from facts.
______
______
Warrant --Simply put, a warrant is the logical connection between a claim and a supporting fact. Sometimes, the logical connection, the way in which a fact logically supports a claim, will be clear, possibly so clear that no explanation from the writer is needed.
______
______
Evidence -- Evidence is also referred to as support or facts. Evidence is just that: facts. Unlike claims, facts are indisputable.
______
______