Massive increase in traffic on Friday means massive increase in particulates in the atmosphere, meaning massive increase in rain odds, and an extra day for the bet.1
P(wet Monday) ∝ (traffic on Friday)
So it's no fucking wonder it always pisses down on Bank Holiday Monday - stop asking, with varying degrees of incredulity, from shoulder-shrugging resignation to blank outrage, "Why does it always piss down on a Bank Holiday Monday?"
It's not the confluence of irony and coincidence, it's basic physics.
An alternative explanation for our inability to get over the seeming inevitability of the BHM=rainsquared equation, is that, actually, rain isn't any more likely on a Bank Holiday Monday -
P(wet Bank Holiday Monday) ≈ P(wet Monday)
- it's just that we notice it more as, on most other Mondays, we're at work, in a building (except farmers, this does not apply to farmers. This blog is not for farmers. Fuck farmers.)2
It's similar to that old bollocks about lost swimmers getting led to shore by dolphins, therefore dolphins=good.3
The fallacy is that the only source of evidence is people led to shore by dolphins.
All those poor buggers who got led away from shore, and then eaten (and probably fucked), by evil pervert dolphins aren't, by the axioms of the theory, available to provide a counter-example.
- For foreigners who don't have Bank Holiday Mondays, it's this Monday when all the banks go on holiday.
- Also, worth noting: with this post I have made an implacable enemy of Mr. G. Thickasshit: farmer; whose brother was eaten by dolphins; now trying to light his disposable barbecue on a rain-swept beach.
- Ok, so this is not similar, and Daniel Dennett pointed it out first, you got me. Fuck off.
