I stole this one from Consequence of Sound who found this YouTube channel called Numberphile, set up by a bunch of people who see the world through their mathematical eyes… everything can be solved as a math problem right? May be!
And the following video tries to solve the toilet problem in music festivals. You know what it is, it’s 6 pm, you want to pee badly and the porta potties have been used thousands of times before you, they are gonna be smelly, dirty and unusable… how to pick the best one?
The method involves two conditions: the best toilet is the cleanest you can find and if you pass on one toilet, you can’t go back because you are on line, and the line has already moved onward. During a large event, the chance to get the clean toilet right away is very slim, so if you feel like doing math, the video below explains everything into details. Jeez does this girl love math! At the end, these 15-minute of calculus (if you manage to watch the whole thing) will teach you that you simply have to scope out 37% of the toilets to have a good idea of the situation… after 37% you can start accepting the one that is the best so far. 37% is the number, but you need to remember a lot of math from high school to understand and reach the end of these calculations! Beware, it involves math sequence, integral, derivation, function, logarithm and exponential…
Now this is highly unpractical since how do estimate how many toilets are out there when you attend a huge festival? and then you have to figure out how many of them 37% could represent. Good luck with that, sure math are always very useful!!
Plus, during busy hours, do you have even the choice to choose the best toilet? it’s not often the case and you are just happy to find one… Some people were complaining on Twitter they had to walk several street blocks to find a toilet at this Made in America festival this weekend. At the FYF fest a week ago, I had no problem looking for some toilets, I simply didn’t pee the whole day, I was totally dehydrated!