Equal-sized categories usually signal unexamined rather than considered conceptualization.

Evidence

All this reinforces the point made at the beginning of the chapter with “full” airplanes. There is a nonlinear relationship between the number of seats occupied and the use of terms like full and empty. If one starts from the assumption that semantics are nonlinear in general, then when one sees an equal categorization the conclusion is that the scholar, NGO, or IGO has not really thought much at all about the empirical and semantic continuum. Equal categories reflect a lack of serious thought about conceptualization and the connection between data, categories, and concepts. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts and Measurement, 722

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Inverts the usual assumption that tidy, equal bins are the mark of rigor, making neatness itself an indicator of conceptual negligence.
• APHORISMS: Practical heuristic: suspicion of symmetry is a serviceable rule for judging any measurement scheme one encounters.