Coughing in ECO 101: A Study

Winter wanes, but we're all still sick. I've noticed that my ECO 101 lecture has recently sounded like one sustained 50-minute cough, so today I decided to see if I could find some empirical evidence of that. For 10 minutes, I tuned my delicate ear to all the pleasant sounds reverberating throughout McCosh 50. (Sadly I made no field recordings.) Between the hours of 11:08 and 11:18 a.m., I tallied 99 coughs -- on average, someone coughed every 6 seconds.Some analysis:

• Coughs ranged in character, from unabashed, wet hacking to polite, muffled throat clearing. Mostly the former.
• There were a few repeat offenders, but overall the coughs appeared evenly distributed throughout the ~400 person lecture.
• Coughs often occurred in little bursts, as if the very sound of someone else's cough could serve as a reminder to dislodge all the phlegm clogging your own throat. This phenomenon is a promising line of inquiry for future studies.
• No hard data to support this claim, but I would estimate that the sniffle count was approximately three times the number of coughs.
• Professor Blinder seemed immune to the contagion.
• Coughing does not make for a environment conducive to learning, according to students/me.

Get well soon, everybody. Please.