The Troublesome Toilet Seat Simulator

Is it more efficient for men to leave toilet seats up or down after use in a dual-sex home? Use the following simulator to find out. Choose the number of men, women and toilets in your home. Pick a number for the total number of toilet visits you want to simulate for and see how much combined work all the people in the house perform under each scheme.

Scheme 1: Men raise toilet seat before and lower it after use. Women do nothing.
Scheme 2: Men raise toilet seat before use if it isn't already raised. Women lower toilet seat before use if it isn't already lowered. Neither changes seat position after use.

Here is the full article with statistical analysis and also a third scheme.

Here is the Simulator:

In the above applet, simulated units denotes the number of units of work actually performed in the simulation. Predicted units denotes the number of units predicted by statistical analysis.

Here is the heart of the simulation code. A simulation that incorporates stochastic independence is probably in the pipeline somewhere during a future inter-project break.

hits since 10 May 1999.