# When did people start categorizing things in "buckets"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 27, 2007, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-start-categorizing-things-in-buckets/409596 "2007-06-27T03:36:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![JimOfAllTrades](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@JimOfAllTrades](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JimOfAllTrades)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2007, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-start-categorizing-things-in-buckets/409596/21 "2007-06-28T19:49:06Z")
This was common jargon in our programming shop in the early 1980s in the same sense that **Crescend** mentions. Anytime a program was adding things into different totals, it was common to refer to the various totals as “buckets” when talking about the program. For example, in A/R the buckets might be the customer’s total balance, the amount past due, the amount 30 days old, etc. In G/L the buckets were the period ending balance, the current period amount, the balance forward, etc. This terminology sometimes carried over into casual conversation about the business as well. But we were a small company started and run by a programmer. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2007, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-start-categorizing-things-in-buckets/409596/22 "2007-06-28T19:53:56Z")
“Bucket” has long been one of my favorite “non-swear” words; i.e. “Don’t be such a bucket.” It combines the “b-word” and the “f-word” quite nicely. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2007, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-start-categorizing-things-in-buckets/409596/23 "2007-06-29T09:05:00Z")
[QUOTE=Crescend] The word “bucket” as a synonym for “bin” (as in “binning”) is quite old in computer science. I can pull up papers dating back to the 60s that refer to “buckets” in the context of an algorithm. [/QUOTE] I think it’s even older than that. I vaguely recall it being used in an Alan Turing paper from around the late 1940’s or early 1950’s. But I can’t find a specific paper to cite. ---
**Author:** ![melvin\_coznowski](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b487fb/32.png) [@melvin\_coznowski](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/melvin_coznowski)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2007, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-start-categorizing-things-in-buckets/409596/24 "2007-06-29T12:04:22Z")
I first came across it as a term other than a pail to carry things in around 1991 or so (though I’ve no doubt it’s older). I was working at the time in the collections dept for a credit card company, and customers were divided into buckets: 30 days delinquent was bucket 1, 60 days delinquent was bucket 2, 90 days was bucket 3, etc. I think it went to bucket 6 IIRC. ---
**Author:** ![Crescend](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Crescend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crescend)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2007, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-start-categorizing-things-in-buckets/409596/25 "2007-06-29T15:55:57Z")
From “Addressing for Random-Access Storage”, IBM Research Journal, 1957: [QUOTE=WW Peterson] This open system can best be described by example. Consider a file of 8,000 records. The memory is divided into 1000 “buckets.” From the identification number of each record a three-digit number would be derived, perhaps by using a certain three digits of the original identification number. This three-digit number designates the bucket of memory in which the record should be stored. The average number of records per bucket of the memory is 8,000/ 1,000 = 8. [/QUOTE] Interestingly enough, this is very, very similar to the last context where I used buckets (a duplicate-merge algorithm for large datasets), though instead of hoping that any identification numbers were uniformly distributed, I used a proper pseudorandom hash function. I’ll try to find an earlier cite - I want to know who put the buckets in computer science. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Keeve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f07891/32.png) [@Keeve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keeve)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2007, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-start-categorizing-things-in-buckets/409596/26 "2007-06-29T15:58:57Z")
Like **Rube E. Tewesday** and **Balthisar** , I never hear this in a casual context. The only example I can think of is a reference to “raining buckets”. But, given that a bucket _is_ what one would place under a leaky ceiling, I don’t think that’s what the OP means. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-start-categorizing-things-in-buckets/409596.md?page=1)