Team Gene by the Numbers

Today I had a doctor’s appointment where I had to give a urine sample and then when I got to work, I found out I was selected for a random drug sample.  So I’m feeling a little like not doing much since I had to pee in a cup twice today. 

Anyway, some of you know that I am a big nerd and I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet of statistics about our family for the last four years.  I have everyone listed by Team Gene number and color coded in families.  I have graphs that show how members have been added to the team, statistics about names, and have calculated the percentage of time (since February of 1997) that someone in the family has been pregnant.  Since I feel like doing something other than work today, I am going to post some of those statistics and graphs.

Most of you already know there are 32 members of Team Gene, including 20 grandchildren.  There are 11 boys and 21 girls.  And most of you already know about the parents added together to make one of their children:

1 (Gene) + 2 (Debra) = 3 (Jack)
3 (Jack) + 9 (Kim) = 12 (Emily)
5 (Marianne) + 8 (Nathan) = 13 (Audrey)
4 (Jen) + 15 (Cliff) = 19 (Elizabeth)
6 (Joe) + 14 (Zela) = 20 (Luke)

except for Suzanne (7) and Ferrin (18) who were off by one because their daughter is 24 (Sarah).

So here are some things you might not know.  The longest time between added family members is 5,283 days (14.5 years) between Suzanne (1981) and Nathan (1996).  The second longest is between Joe and Suzanne: 1035 days (2.8 years).  The average is 489 days (1.3 years).  So basically, every 1.3 years, another person is added to Team Gene.  And if we ignore the big gap between Suzanne and Nathan, it becomes 324 days.

The smallest time between added family members is 17 days between Kara and Lexa.  The second smallest is 24 days between Elizabeth and Luke.  There are also only 2 cases where two family members have consecutive Team Gene numbers: Kim (9) and Andrew (10) and Lexa (29) and Ellowyn (30).  The biggest gaps between family member’s numbers are between Jen (4) and Cliff (15) and between Suzanne (7) and Ferrin (18).

Here are some name facts.  Using only first and middle names, “M” is the most popular letter used (8) followed by “J” (7) and then “A” & “S” (6 each).  And there’s only one first name that starts with “M”; the rest are middle names!  Speaking of middle names, the most popular is Lynn (4) followed by W (3).  The most popular letter in Joe’s family is “J” (4 names) followed by “M” (3) and the most popular is Suzanne’s family is “S”, obviously, with 4 names.  Marianne’s family is split between “A” and “M” with 3 names each.  The other families have at most two of any particular letter.  (By the way, am I the only sister who is using Christensen as an official middle name? Just wondering as it changes the numbers slightly.)

We all know there are no birthdays in June and November, but April is by far the favorite birth month with 6 birthdays.  Far behind that are 2 months with 4 birthdays each (February and December).  I’ve also calculated the average time between child births for all the women.  Kim, Suzanne and I are each at about 2.5 years, Zela averages 3 years, Marianne is at 2 years and Mom is the winner of this category at 1.85 years.  She also has the shortest time between children (396 days) while I have the longest (1,213 days).  Also, in the time from February 1997 to now, 76% of that 17 years, someone has been pregnant in our family. 

Isn’t this fun?  What else do I have?

The biggest gap between boys is between Tyler and Jace (9 people) while the biggest gap between girls is only 2 between Zela and Samantha.  The last time there were more boys than girls in Team Gene was when Jack was born!  Since then, they’ve been playing catch-up and when Andrew was born, it was the last time things were even. 

Now you are all nerds too!