(I have been doing laundry on the weekend since the time we did the family room/garage remodel. Our little laundry area was out of commission while that was under way. We hooked up the washer to the back yard faucet outside the dining room. We had a clothes line on the side of the house. I did the laundry on the weekend because I could wash it, hang it to dry and take it in in one day. I now can do it any old day but I've just been stuck in that routine.)
When I take clothes out of the washer I hang pants and shirts as they come out. (Remember that we've got a clothes line in the garage?) When I pull a sock out, if I haven't found its mate I set it on top of the washer. When I get a pair I drape them over the line together. That way, when they're dry they're already matched so it makes putting them away easier. This weekend sock after sock was the first of a pair. It turned out that I had 10 pairs of socks in the load and it wasn't till the 11th sock came out of the washer that I got my first pair of socks matched.
What are the chances of that?
About 1 in 180. (That's not so fantastic but I thought it was a little weird.)
In case you're interested, the following shows the chances that each of the first 10 socks pulled from the washer does not match one already taken out:
Doing the arithmetic we find the answer. Aren't you thrilled to know that?
20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2
-- * -- * -- * -- * -- * -- * -- * -- * -- * --
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
5 comments:
You are so cool! I never thought about socks like that.
Why don't you do this for the next 5-10 weeks and report the results. If the pattern holds, you could be onto some new law of sock-physics.
You expect me to figure out the chances of no-match socks when I can't even count quilt blocks? So I had 40 blocks, which would have made a 5 x 8 top and figured that if I added another 40 the quilt would be twice as big (10 x 16). It didn't quite happen that way. If you want more laundry education, I could tell you how I sort the clean laundry.
Well, 1 in 180 doesn't sound so impressive, but given that it is THE worst odds for 10 pairs of socks, that is pretty cool.
I like how you do sox. :)
Here is our problem. 4 people one pair of socks per day X 7 days. Match what you can as the socks are pulled out of the washer and hung on the drying rack. When dry put the matching ones away (usually all mine) then throw the rest into the sock basket for later matching. Match them and then try to figure out where the at least 100 mismatched socks are.
Post a Comment