A game theoretic approach to the toilet seat problem

Heh. My simpler solution is to just always sit (I'm a guy). It's more comfortable, requires less concentration and removes any possibility of missing.<p>The only time I stand is for proper urinals.

This whole problem has become a cliché. I've been married for over a year now and never once has this been an issue. Maybe it's because I pee in the sink..

I always leave the seat AND the lid down, to cause equal annoyance for everyone

There is a simple solution that takes care of the problem entirely and has the added benefit of increasing general cleanliness around the operation's area and avoid any possible argument: just perform #1 seated.

Is this really a problem? Everyone I've ever cohabitated with engaged in their own toilet seat manipulation and it was never an issue. Maybe it's a US thing.

Some men will pee on the seat — whether intentionally or not I have never figured out — if it's left down. Leaving it up maximizes cleanliness.

"In our analysis we shall assume that John and Marsha perform toilet operations with the same frequency"<p>Yeah right ... I have a wife, two sons and two daughters and we have 4 bathrooms in the house which works out perfectly. That's one bathroom for each female and a spare one for the three males to share.<p>And the comments about the lid are funny. I was taught to put it down when I was growing up, but I never find one that way (don't let the dog kiss you at my house).

Sometimes, when you apply real-world numbers, a single forcing function overwhelms any other subtleties in the analysis. The analysis in this case fails to address the extraordinarily high cost of nagging John must endure when Marsha is inconvenienced N(J) as opposed to the other way around. Since N(J) = K * N(M), and K is never less than 50 IMO, strategy M will be the winner. Always.

Oddly enough, this is the <i>second</i> game theoretic analysis of toilet seats I've seen in my life; the first was <a href="http://www.urticator.net/essay/4/482.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.urticator.net/essay/4/482.html</a> which in some ways seems to be better.

Am I the only man in the world who leaves the seat up regardless of the operation undertaken?

Or place a coin near the toilet and flip it after use (and washing your hands). Use the coin to determine a new random seat position thus causing randomized nuisance for everyone.

This analysis misses a very important point - Marsha benefits from John lifting the seat since this avoids it getting dirty (assuming they take turns using the toilet and John is not a very accurate shooter).<p>Moreover, John is probably going to perform #1 more frequently then #2 - by a factor of 3-4? Thus, we can further stipulate that his default state should be 'seat up' and ask whether Marsha should be made to lift the seat up after she is done.

"Criterion (2) seems plausible. It requires, however, that Marsha put the seat in the up position after performing a toilet operation some percentage of the time. No instance of this behaviour has ever been observed in recorded history; ergo this criterion can be ruled out."<p>I thought it was a pity that he skipped this one. He was otherwise really quite thorough!

Of course, there's always the simple option of "simply sit down".

Another solution is to get a dog. Marsha will realize that sitting in wet dog slobber is far worse than having to put the seat down occasionally. <i>(At least, that's the rationale I use for leaving the seat up in my house.)</i>

My solution is to just leave the toilet seat any which way and pay it no mind. If someone's getting bent out of shape over this sort of issue, they're squarely in the realm of first world problems.

The simplest solution is that each member of the household customize the seat to their liking before performing any actions. If you fall in and flush your intestines out, well, tough giggles.

I showed the article to my girlfriend and she suggested adding the cleaning cost to the equation... well played!

#FirstWorldProblems

Install a urinal!

Everyone is so full of simple solutions. My simple solution is to own a house with at least enough toilets for everybody so that you can have your own and don't need to share.