Why Are Men's Rooms Always Dirty?
Thursday, December 27A game theoretic approach to the problem of why men's bathrooms are always dirty
Please leave the toilet as you would like to find it.
(a groundkeeper's sign on a campground)
Stand close, the man behind you may be barefoot.
(graffiti on a men's room)
Why are men's rooms always dirty? Could not we all simply stand closer in order to avoid the problem? Everybody would be better of this way. Correct - but...
What is a single man's benefit of standing closer to the urinal? In the best case, his benefit is that the man behind him does not get wet feet (if only it was 'wet'). In the worst case, his 'benefit' is that he himself is standing in his forerunner's urin which he will not discover without close examination. This is especially upsetting if you have to stand in front of the urinal barefoot (as, for instance, in a swimming pool's restrooms).
Regardless of whether the forerunner was standing too far from the urinal: You are always better off not standing close (a close examination of the floor is already more time-consuming than simply standing at a footstep's distance). It is the dominant strategy to keep distance.
This situation is called a prisoners' dilemma; everybody chooses the dominant strategy even though everybody is worse off. Guests of men's rooms behave just the same way.
(The antecedent remarks are based on game theory, a branch of applied mathematics that is often used in the context of economics. The writing of my article was greatly inspired by Prof. Dr. Christian Rieck, a german professor who specializes in game theory. Visit his website at www.spieltheorie.de)
