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Since it was briefly mentioned in another thread, I would like to look into this classic dilemma in more details.
Re: Toilet Seat: Up or Down?
There is actually some kind of formulae that we could use to determine whether the toilet seat(s) should be left up or down, but first we'll have to know the following variables:
A) number of male and female in the household
B) number of toilet(s)
C) frequency of going to the bathroom
Moreover, there are a couple of presumed constants:
D) workload of lifting the toilet seat is the same as lowering it
E) male and female are equal in status; in other words, there is no sexual discrimination against either gender (or there will not be any argument at all)
Basically, it is a tally of how many visits to the bathroom and the according workload of lifting or lowering the toilet seat.
For simplicity purpose, we'll start with a 1M1F household with only 1 toilet; and we assume that neither the man nor the woman have any medical problem that requires more frequent visits. The math lies in the fact that women ALWAYS use the toilet with its seat DOWN while most men only use it DOWN ONCE a day and the rest of time UP.
The seemingly courteous but SILLIEST way is to put it back to its original position after use since you never know who will be the next to use the toilet again. Even if it is of alternate order (e.g. MFMFMF), there would still be the chance when it comes to the man using the toilet with its seat down and therefore a waste of 2 units of workload (of both woman lifting and then the man lowering it). And you could probably guess that there will be chances that visits will be of random order (like MMFMFF) which incurs significant waste of time and effort.
A less silly scheme is for the man to lower it down after use while the woman doesn't need to lift it back up. In this way, there will be less aggregate workload (and the woman will be very happy). But the optimal solution is to just leave the toilet seat the way it is after use:
http://www.speech.sri.com/people/anand/toiletseat/
Will write a bit more on this perhaps ...
Re: Toilet Seat: Up or Down?
There is actually some kind of formulae that we could use to determine whether the toilet seat(s) should be left up or down, but first we'll have to know the following variables:
A) number of male and female in the household
B) number of toilet(s)
C) frequency of going to the bathroom
Moreover, there are a couple of presumed constants:
D) workload of lifting the toilet seat is the same as lowering it
E) male and female are equal in status; in other words, there is no sexual discrimination against either gender (or there will not be any argument at all)
Basically, it is a tally of how many visits to the bathroom and the according workload of lifting or lowering the toilet seat.
For simplicity purpose, we'll start with a 1M1F household with only 1 toilet; and we assume that neither the man nor the woman have any medical problem that requires more frequent visits. The math lies in the fact that women ALWAYS use the toilet with its seat DOWN while most men only use it DOWN ONCE a day and the rest of time UP.
The seemingly courteous but SILLIEST way is to put it back to its original position after use since you never know who will be the next to use the toilet again. Even if it is of alternate order (e.g. MFMFMF), there would still be the chance when it comes to the man using the toilet with its seat down and therefore a waste of 2 units of workload (of both woman lifting and then the man lowering it). And you could probably guess that there will be chances that visits will be of random order (like MMFMFF) which incurs significant waste of time and effort.
A less silly scheme is for the man to lower it down after use while the woman doesn't need to lift it back up. In this way, there will be less aggregate workload (and the woman will be very happy). But the optimal solution is to just leave the toilet seat the way it is after use:
http://www.speech.sri.com/people/anand/toiletseat/
Will write a bit more on this perhaps ...