For eighteenconsecutiveFebruaries on diamond geezer I've kept myself busy by counting things. Ten different counts, to be precise, in a stats-tastic 28-day feature called The Count. You therefore won't be surprised to hear that I intend to do exactly the same again this year, despite that fact that 2021 will be the most atypical February of all. I kicked off this annual exercise way back in 2003, so I now have almost two decades of thrilling historical data to analyse. Expect a post of comparisons and lockdown contrasts at the end of the month, if you can bear the wait. Here's my selected list of ten countables for February 2021.
Count 1: Number of visits to this blog (Feb 2020 total: 66682) Count 2: Number of comments on this blog (Feb 2020 total: 702) Count 3: Number of words I wrote on this blog (Feb 2020 total: 29099) Count 4: Number of hours I sleep (Feb 2020 total: 199) Count 5: Number of nights I go out and am vaguely sociable (Feb 2020 total: 4) Count 6: Number of bottles of Becks I drink (Feb 2020 total: 0) Count 7: Number of cups of tea I drink (Feb 2020 total: 122) Count 8: Number of trains I travel on (Feb 2020 total: 136) Count 9: Number of steps I walk (Feb 2020 total: 404500) Count 10: The Mystery Count(Feb 2020 total: 0) (again)
We already know that 5 and 8 are going to be zero this year. The Mystery Count invariably is too, and I can't imagine 2021 being any different. So I'm introducing two more (one-off) categories to give me something to properly enumerate.
Count 11: Number of hours I spend out of the house Count 12: Number of ????
I'll decide on count 12 at the end of the day, so feel free to offer some ideas as to what I might choose. And can I suggest that you pick something to count this month too, not necessarily one of my categories, then tally it carefully so that you can report back and tell us on the 28th. It wouldn't be February without something to count.
9pm update: Thanks for your 50-odd suggestions, some of which were very odd indeed. No I am not counting that, thanks. I immediately disregarded the dozen suggestions relating to 'things I see' rather than 'things I do' because those don't tend to work well. Also in the bin are suggestions relating to things which hardly ever happen, those whose totals would have been impractically large and predictable counts I can already tell you the answer to. Nor will I be counting different types of comment, as several of you wanted, because Count 2 already covers that. Instead the suggestion I've decided to run with is...
Count 12: Number of times I wash my hands.
...because that's got a proper 2021 vibe to it. But there were seven other suggestions I nearly went with instead, so I've decided to count those too (behind the scenes) and will add them to my eventual write-up if they prove interesting enough. Thanks, a good burst of crowdsourcing can't be beaten.
For eighteen consecutive Februaries on diamond geezer I've kept myself busy by counting things. Ten different counts, to be precise, in a stats-tastic 28-day feature called The Count. You therefore won't be surprised to hear that I intend to do exactly the same again this year, despite that fact that 2021 will be the most atypical February of all. I kicked off this annual exercise way back in 2003, so I now have almost two decades of thrilling historical data to analyse. Expect a post of comparisons and lockdown contrasts at the end of the month, if you can bear the wait. Here's my selected list of ten countables for February 2021.
