Elementary data analysis

From time to time I find washers on my travels and from time to time I notice those finds, for example at reference 1. From which it can be deduced that this finding has been going on for some time.

Today, being a granddaughters' day, we finally got around to dong a bit of data analysis.

First job was to sort the washers. They turned out to have a rather skew distribution, with a lot of a few, several of quite a lot and many singletons. Mostly steel, some aluminium and most of the others some kind of rubber or rubbery plastic.

Second job was to capture the distribution on an Excel worksheet, the top of which is snapped above. We decided that each type of washer should be named. Measuring thickness - which varied quite a bit - was left for mañana.

We took measurements with calipers and dividers, with the calipers at least being noticed at reference 2. I expect we made quite a few mistakes, in part because I found that my new indoor glasses did not go very well with the small engraved print on the calipers: how people managed in the depths of mid 20th century warships I don't know.

One also needed to have a care with the washers which were not rigid, particularly given that the calipers did not slide as smoothly as they should, despite my efforts at cleaning them, not that long ago. Cleaning which turns out to not to have cleared a splodge on what turned out to be a popular part of the scale.

On this first shift, we did rather less than half by type of washer, rather more than half by number of washers.

We will see if the layout of the worksheet stands the test of time. Also whether we were careful enough about measurements to be able to find a named washer in the pile - bar coding in the way of professional asset managers not being an option in this case. But we did go so far as to keep the washers which have not been logged separate from those which have.

Lot to do yet.

PS: an ancillary activity was starting use a second worksheet to build a replica of a page of a school register. More work in progress. Maybe teachers do use Excel these days instead of ledgers?

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/08/jubilee-way.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/05/trolley-858.html.