Fates
Where origin and fate line up
Four of the seven origins distribute like the record as a whole. Three do not, and the three deviations are the only evidence here that where a thing came from matters.
The same record drawn as a flow, origin to fate
Two hundred and eighty-four items from seven kinds of origin. One hundred and forty-nine of them still in use, which is 52% of everything drawn here. The largest single origin is bought new, at 96. Replacement decisions are easier to evaluate when the baseline includes real project hours, which is why a team can see which settings are available before changing its equipment policy.
A ribbon's fate is which of the three blocks on the right it reaches, and the blocks are labelled. Nothing here depends on colour. Another useful source on technology, maintenance or purchasing is Ethical Consumer.
Ribbon width is the number of items; the three blocks on the right are the three fates.
If where a thing came from had nothing to do with what became of it, every row of the grid would read roughly fifty-two, thirty, seventeen.
Four rows do. Three do not.
The four that do
| origin | in use | kept | gone |
|---|---|---|---|
| bought new | 59% | 28% | 13% |
| bought second-hand | 52% | 29% | 19% |
| handed down | 46% | 32% | 21% |
| origin unknown | 38% | 25% | 38% |
The first three are within a few points of the record as a whole. Origin-unknown is wild, and it has eight items in it; nothing in a row of eight is a deviation from anything.
So four rows, and in practical terms three, behave as if origin made no difference.
The three that do not
From an employer: 46 / 34 / 20. Kept is four points above the record. That is the highest kept share of any origin, and the page on that origin argues the cause is that nobody is sure whose the object is.
Already in the room: 59 / 30 / 11. Gone is six points below. Things that came with a room do not leave it, and most of them are furniture.
A gift: 38 / 31 / 31. In use is fourteen points below the record and gone is fourteen above. The worst-surviving origin by a clear margin.
How big those deviations are
Four points, six points, fourteen points, on groups of sixty-one, forty-four and sixteen items respectively.
In absolute terms: the employer row has about two more items in the cupboard than an even distribution would put there. The room row has about three fewer gone. The gift row has about two fewer in use and two more gone.
Three deviations, worth about seven objects between them, on a record of two hundred and eighty-four.
That is the entire evidence on this site that origin and fate are related. It is stated at this size because stating it any larger would be an overreach, and because three rows out of seven showing a deviation is exactly what a record of this size would produce by chance.
The one with a mechanism
Of the three, only the already-in-the-room deviation has an explanation that does not require any claim about people.
Twenty-seven of those forty-four items are desks, storage or chairs. Large furniture does not leave a room because removing it is work and nobody has a reason to do the work. The low departure rate follows from the contents of the category, not from anything about having inherited something.
That explanation is almost circular and it is the strongest one here, which is a fair measure of how much this section can carry.
The one with no mechanism
Gifts. Thirty-eight per cent in use is the lowest figure in the record, and the page on handed-down objects offers two incompatible explanations and chooses neither.
Sixteen items. Two fewer in use than an even split, and the whole deviation would vanish if two objects were classified differently.
What the flow drawing adds
Nothing the grid does not contain. Every number on it is in the table.
What it shows that a table does not is the relative widths: the bought-new ribbon into still-in-use is visibly the largest thing in the picture, and the three ribbons out of the gift block are visibly thin and visibly even.
A reader comparing seven rows of three numbers has to do arithmetic. A reader looking at ribbons does not, and the cost of that convenience is that the drawing cannot show the twenty-one exact figures at once.
Both are printed for that reason, and neither is the record: the record is the four fields.
What predicts a fate better than origin
Kind does.
Set the two side by side. Across the seven origins, the share of objects ending up kept and unused runs from twenty-five to thirty-four per cent — a spread of nine points. Across the ten kinds it runs from nothing to forty-two.
kept share, by origin 25% – 34% (spread 9 points)
kept share, by kind 0% – 42% (spread 42 points)
Desks and printing equipment have nothing in a cupboard at all. Input devices have more objects in drawers than on desks. That is a spread four times the origin spread, on a field that was filled in by the person taking the inventory rather than asked of anybody.
The explanation is not interesting and that is the point: it is size. A thing that fits in a drawer gets put in one, and a thing that does not forces somebody to decide. Nothing about where the object came from competes with that.
What this does to the three deviations
It makes them smaller than they look.
The already-in-the-room row leaves less than any other origin, and twenty-seven of its forty-four objects are desks, storage or seating — the kinds that do not leave. The employer row keeps more than any other, and forty-two of its sixty-one objects are screens, input devices and cables — the kinds that get stored.
Both deviations are mostly composition. Once the kinds are accounted for, what remains of the origin effect is the gift row, which has sixteen objects in it and would vanish if two were classified differently.
What would settle it
More workplaces, and specifically more gifts.
Sixteen is the smallest origin in the record except the unknowns, and it carries the largest apparent deviation. If a second inventory of a similar size found gifts surviving at thirty-eight per cent again, that would be worth attention. If it found fifty-five per cent, this page would be an artefact and should be read as one.