Two of the most discussed yet most poorly understood topics in this day of quantitative geology are the concepts of grain size and sorting of sediments. Countless values have veen published by research workers, recorded in innumerable theses, and secreted in oil company files: yet the meaning of all these figures and their ultimate geological significance (if any) are still quite obscure. One can hardly read a month’s publications without enountering plots of sorting versus size or distance; countour maps showing values of grain size parameters; or statemenets of the alleged increase of sorting with sediment transport. Despite all this effort, few of these papers attempt to explain why or how the parameters are varying. If this vagueness is true of fairly simple ideas such as mean size or sorting, the situation with regard to more complex parameters like skewness or kurtosis is even worse. Little attempt has been made to relate these measures to the mode of deposition or to environmental characteristcs and most published papers simply tabulate these values without any evident attempt to understand or interpret them. One begins to wonder if all these length computations are not wasted effort — do they show us anything of real value, or are they merely a deceptively impressive shell of figures surrounding a vacumm of geologic meaning?