So far, 6 people have submitted lists of 100 (not too late! more data = better). Thanks to everyone who played along, despite any frustrations.

Overall, people listed 96.5 (2.88) items [standard deviations in parentheses]. This was already interesting; 3.5 items were left out. You could have had 3 more pairs of socks, and possibly a lone sock as well!

I categorized the items broadly into clothing, personal, household, and kitchen. This was completely unscientific and only done to get roughly even categories. Tada.

This will be the only gender comparison chart because the sample size is pathetic (2 men). However, the number of additional clothing items for women is roughly 10, which is what one of my co-instructors estimated. None of those 10 items involved make-up.

This is the average number of class items for a few common things. Cutlery, as you’ll note from the error bars, was the biggest source of disagreement. I stuck 2 sporks/knife thingies on my list. Others laid out four settings of forks, knives, and spoons.

Other interesting tidbits:
–Everyone put jeans. Not everyone put a belt.
–Only one person put a clothing iron. Only one person put a vacuum.
–People added more shoes than socks (although shoes included flip-flops, sandals, and other sock-less foot accoutrements).
–Only one person put a TV, but everyone put a laptop and a cell phone on the list.
–Only one person put a book on their list.

That’s it for today; back to lab. For next time: how much do sibling lists overlap? What about couple lists? Does one really need pants?