To ponder:
Let's say you have a large pile of clean laundry. And in this pile are x pairs of clean socks (assume that each pair of socks is distinct; i.e. each sock has one and only one matching sock).
I haven't worked out all the math, but it seems to me that you'd have to pull out slightly more than x/2 socks before the odds were in your favor for picking out a matching sock (the equation is y=n/(2x-n), where y is the odds of pulling out a matching sock on the next try, n is the number of single socks already pulled out of the pile, and x is the number of pairs of socks).
Why is it, then, that to get a matching pair of socks, one must pull out every single odd sock before finally getting a match?