Edinburgh: Not Shy About the Toilets
September 2, 2009
Scotland is an English-speaking country. It’s not hard to figure out how everything works. Nothing is terribly exotic, save the occasional offal-based meal. However, people will hesitate for just a moment after you ask about the “ladies’ room.” In Scotland, it’s really just the “toilets.”
Many Americans find this discomfiting. While it is certainly the case that the vast majority of those requesting a ladies’ room intend to perform a biological function of some sort while there, we would like the plausible deniability provided by the possibility that perhaps we simply wish to wash our hands before eating, or freshen our makeup, or — to employ a classic — powder our noses.
I am reminded of a story I read in the book Innumeracy, by John Allen Paulos. One problem with polling people about their sexual behavior is that many people, even when completing an anonymous survey, feel the need to lie, perhaps not truly believing that the survey is anonymous. If you want to track the spread of swine flu by asking how many people French kiss underage piglets, your numbers may represent substantial underreporting.
One way around this is to take a large sample size and ask each of the participants to flip a coin, and keep the results of the coin flip to himself. If the result is heads, the participant simply answers “yes” to the question; if the result is tails, he answers truthfully. Hence, someone who French kisses underage piglets may report a “yes” answer — with the plausible deniability that, of course, his coin may have come up heads.
Interpreting the results is simple. In a large enough pool, we can safely assume that 1/2 of the coins came up heads, and therefore half of the people answered yes. So, if there are 1000 people, throw out 500 of the “yes” answers. If you have 100 yes and 400 no answers left, we may safely conclude that 1/5 of people French kiss underage piglets. (This method is effective, of course, because we don’t need to know which people engage in this porcine suaviation — simply how many do so).
Also, that woman on the sign is seriously pear-shaped.
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Fast forward to about 2 minutes in.
I also motion to institute the mandated usage of “porcine suaviation” as the title of either a government agency or a band.
P.S. — Regarding the “woman” in the picture, I was thinking either Marilyn Monroe and her billowy skirt or a chess pawn on stilts.
The longer I look at her, the more she looks like a lampshade.