So I was just lying in bed and a stupid thought hit me!
There are 1440 minutes in a day.
In my 18 years of life, have I woken up at every single one of them at least once?
At first it feels like the answer is no.
There’s no way I’ve woken up at something like 4:37 PM or 3:12 AM, right?
But then I remember, babies.
When I was a baby, I had the sleep schedule of a drunk raccoon.
Woke up 8 times a day, random as hell.
1:17 AM? 5:46 AM? 12:52 PM? Probably all of them.
So then I think: maybe I have hit every minute once.
But wait. Most people tend to wake up at round times.
6:00 AM, 7:30 AM, 8:00 AM.
How often does someone wake up at 4:04 AM? Or 11:47 PM?
And then I learned about something called the coupon collector problem!
it says that to randomly collect 1440 unique items, you’d need around 11,300 tries to have a high chance of getting them all.
So I do some quick math:
When I was a baby, maybe I woke up 8 times a day for 3 years, that’s ~8,700 wake-ups.
From age 4 to 17, let’s say 1.5 wake-ups a day (school, naps, random nights), that’s another ~7,600.
And a few years ago during quarantine, I’ve been waking up like 3 times a day with no schedule at all, there’s another 3,000 or so.
That’s over 19,000 wake-ups! Way above 11,300.
So statistically, I should have covered all 1440 minutes.
But that assumes each wake-up is totally random.
Which they’re not. Wake-ups are clustered. Certain times are just more common.
There could still be some weird minute like 3:39 PM that I’ve never hit.
And then it gets worse.
What even counts as waking up?
If I doze off in class for 10 minutes and open my eyes at the end, does that count?
What about those hazy wake-ups where I roll over, look at the wall, and fall back asleep without even checking the time?
Or the times I wake up from a dream, but force myself to sleep again to continue it, does that brief conscious moment count as a wake-up?
And what if I almost wake up? Like I’m in that half-sleep fog where I hear something but never really open my eyes? Is that a wake-up or a glitch in the matrix?
This is turning into a philosophical breakdown.
Please, I need answers or more questions. Statisticians, sleep experts, existential crisis enjoyers… someone spiral with me.
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I’m hung up on ages 4-17, I feel like once you hit that age routines start getting hammered hard. like if you haven’t hit every time during your infancy years what are the chances you hit your missing times when waking/sleeping with the same routine?