Many people are interested in various kinds of “lists”. The following are some examples:
. names of the world’s countries (there are about 100)
. famous people who died during consensual sexual intercourse JIM GOAD
. all known cocktails
. people suspected of being Jack the Ripper
. worst places to hitchhike
. airplane crashes resulting in multiple deaths
. people misquoted by Ronald Reagan
. breeds of dogs which bite people the most, and the least
My question is what lists can you think of that contains the largest number of elements?
You don’t have to specify the actual elements. But just estimate their number.
I’m curious just what lists you can think of that would contain the largest number of elements.
For the purposes of this thread, a list does not count unless the individual elements have been named.
So, “a list of all the stars in the universe” would not count since although their number has been estimated,
AFAIK, no one has ever tried to name them all (which would result in knowing their exact number).
It gets hard to define the line between a list, and a file or database.
The Social security administration maintains a list of all people with Social security numbers who have died, for anti-fraud purposes. It’s called the DeathMaster file and has 80 million or so entries.
That’s soooo 20th century! The actual number of countries is almost twice that. There’s about 190 recognised countries, and more than a dozen unrecognised or not universally recognised ones.
IMHO, a database or file can be considered a list if:
There are finitely many elements. E.g. even though the list of integers is countable, it is infinite and therefore the elements can’t, even in theory, be printed out on finitely many pieces of paper using a consistent print size and spacing. Printing out a hard copy likewise would be expected to take an infinite amount of time.
The elements can be listed in some fairly well defined order. For example, the DeathMaster file could be printed out in numerical order by SSN or in phone-book alphabetic order by name provided that the wannabe printer has enough paper.
Oh, way to make me feel like an old man - useless, irrelevant and way past his prime.
I’m going to have a good cry now.
Cestrian too.
You guys have no mercy in your hearts?
J J/K BTW
But if you want to talk about heartless, see if you can guess the real reason I posted this thread? I bet you can do it. There is a good hint contained in my OP.
There are only about 20 million directly observed stars. All the others are either too dim, or hidden behind other stars, or too far away and indistinguishable from their surroundings (e.g., stars in other galaxies). Many a country’s census list must be bigger than that.
The largest actively maintained list is probably the inventory list for the British Library or a similar institution. It currently holds about 170 million separate items, with over three million more added each year.
