Seven homes had somewhere set up for it

The seven

Three matches: D, H and I. Four mismatches: A, C, E and G. For broader research beyond this small household record, consult work published by University of Warwick.

What the mismatch is not

It is not a claim that the desks were bad. A place with a shorter median sitting is a place people stayed at for less time per stretch, and there are at least three reasons for that which have nothing to do with quality.

Use. The set-up places were often used for the stretches that are naturally short — the morning hour before a meeting, the half hour after lunch — while the long uninterrupted blocks happened elsewhere because that is when the rest of the dwelling was free.

Hour. Four of the mismatched dwellings put their desk in a room that produces light endings, and light endings cluster between nine and one. A place that fails at midday has its stretches cut.

Other people. The kitchen table in Home A is the longest-median place in that dwelling and also the place with the most wanted endings. Long stretches and frequent interruptions are not opposites; they are different measures.

What the three matches have in common

D is a bedroom desk in a room nobody else enters. H is a study with a door. I is a desk in a one-bedroom flat where the only alternative is a sofa.

In each case the set-up place is either private or the only serious option, and in two of the three it is both.

Where the desk won, it won because the alternatives were worse or because nobody else came in.

That is a thin generalisation from three cases and it is offered as such.

The two homes without

Home B is a one-bed flat that works at its table and its sofa. Home F is a bungalow with six places and nothing designated among them.

Their medians are sixty-one and thirty-five minutes — the second longest and the shortest in the record.

Two dwellings with no set-up place, at opposite ends of the distribution, which is as clear a demonstration as nine homes can give that having somewhere set up is not what determines how long anybody stays anywhere.

The temptation

The obvious reading of "four of seven desks were not the best place" is that desks are overrated, and it is not supportable.

The four mismatched dwellings all used their desks. All four used them on at least four of five days. The desk was not abandoned; it simply was not where the longest stretches happened.

The equally obvious opposite reading — that these households should be using their desks more — is not supportable either. It assumes long stretches are the goal, and nothing in this record establishes that a long stretch is better than a short one.

What this section is actually for

To separate two things that get run together: whether a dwelling has somewhere to work, and whether that somewhere is where the work happens.

Seven of nine had one. Three of seven used it that way. Those are different facts about the same dwellings, and a survey that asked only the first question would have recorded seven out of nine and missed the entire pattern.

How much the desks were used

The mismatch is about medians, not about neglect, and the usage figures make that clear.

The three matched dwellings — D, H and I — put more than half their sittings at the set-up place. The four mismatched ones put between a quarter and a third there.

So the difference is not that four households ignored their desks. It is that in four dwellings the desk was one place among several and in three it was the main one, and where it was the main one it also held people longest.

Which of those is cause and which is consequence, nine homes cannot say. A desk used for most of the day will accumulate the long stretches whether or not it is the better place, simply because the long stretches have to happen somewhere.