  We investigate the mass function of cold, dusty clumps in 11 low- and
high-mass star-forming regions. Using a homogeneous fitting technique, we
analyze the shape of each region's clump mass function and examine the
commonalities among them. We find that the submillimeter continuum clump mass
function in low-mass star-forming regions is typically best fit by a lognormal
distribution, while that in high-mass star-forming regions is better fit by a
double power law. A single power law clump mass distribution is ruled out in
all cases. Fitting all of the regions with a double power law, we find the mean
power law exponent at the high-mass end of each mass function is alpha_high =
-2.4+/-0.1, consistent with the Salpeter result of alpha = -2.35. We find no
region-to-region trend in alpha_high with the mass scale of the clumps in a
given region, as characterized by their median mass. Similarly, non
non-parametric tests show that the shape of the clump mass function does not
change much from region to region, despite the obvious changes in the intrinsic
mass scale. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that the clump mass
distribution is determined by a highly stochastic process, such as turbulent
fragmentation. It may also suggest that the data reduction and analysis
techniques strongly affect the shape of the derived mass function.
