  A survey of results concerning the IMF derived from star counts is presented,
including work up to, but not including, that presented in these proceedings.
The situation regarding low-mass stars in the field and in clusters, high-mass
stars and intermediate-mass stars in clusters and associations of the Milky Way
and LMC, pre-main sequence objects in visible and embedded clusters, and the
IMF in galaxies more distant than the Magellanic Clouds is discussed, with an
emphasis on the sources of uncertainty. Most of these uncertainties, especially
radial mass segregation and unresolved binaries, would steepen the true IMF
relative to the apparent IMF. Several cases of apparently large variations in
cluster IMFs are pointed out, and a graphical comparison of results for about
60 clusters shows a spread of at least unity in the logarithmic IMF index for
all mass ranges above about 1 $M_{\sun}$. I conclude that either: 1. The
uncertainties are so large that very little can be said about an average IMF or
IMF variations; or 2. If the observations are taken at face value, there are
strong indications of IMF variations, which do not seem to correlate with
obvious environmental conditions like metallicity or stellar density. If there
is an average IMF, I suggest that it is steepest at intermediate masses. If the
variations are real, they offer a useful test of theoretical models.
