Bathroom Exits

This is a view of the inside exit door of the men's restroom at a movie theater in Germantown, Maryland. (I had to be careful with the camera in there!)

Notice the spatial pattern of wear on the main part of the door and the vertical wear pattern on its left-hand edge. This illustrates a bivariate frequency distribution of hand placement along with a marginal frequency distribution (on the left) of just the vertical hand placement.

Users of this restroom exit by pushing on the door and proceeding around to the right towards the theater. As the men do so, they don’t seem use the metal push panel provided. It doesn't seem to be designed properly for mens' heights. Instead, the men seem to push higher on the door wearing off the red paint. We see a two-dimensional spatial distribution of their hand placement. The wear pattern shows both the horizontal and vertical placement of their hands as they push the door to exit.

But the picture also shows more. As the men exit the door, they proceed out to the right, rubbing their hands on the edge of the door. The resulting wear pattern shows the marginal distribution of the vertical position of their hands. They push the center of the door and then scrape their hands on the edge producing both the two-dimensional spatial distribution followed by a one-dimensional marginal distribution.

I noticed the open exit door on the women's room. I couldn't get the picture there. But the women's door had much less wear on the door. They seemed to use the metal push plate to open the door. It was mounted more correctly for their height or perhaps the women were in less of a hurry.