This is a MATH proof.


You don't need to understand or even enjoy math to appreciate this task, however. I'll clearly mark where the math (more specifically, statistics, as is appropriate to the task) begins and ends. Feel free to skip it.



One day I began to become concerned over the sloth with which many students seemed to descend a staircase at my school. This was simply unacceptable. Were they really dawdling, though, or was it just my imagination? What could solve this mystery? Surely only statistical testing would do. So I set out to measure, over the course of many mornings, the time it took students to descend the staircase when it was otherwise empty. This would ensure that they weren't being held up by traffic. The testing is as follows.

Math (statistics) begins here

Warning: I have only a rudimentary understanding of statistics, probably comparable to an introductory-level class or thereabouts. While I have done my best to ensure that tests were carried out properly, I make no guarantees. Also, I can't make any fancy math symbols here so words will have to do.

I. We want to compare the mean time for students descending the staircase to the mean time it takes to descend the staircase at a reasonably quick pace without any interfering traffic. This was measured as 5.57 seconds.

Null hypothesis: Mean(descent time for students) = Mean(quick descent)
Alternative hypothesis: Mean(descent time for students) > Mean(quick descent)

II. Our data are from a stratified random sample- data were measured alternating from male and female subjects. Because data measurement was sporadic, this is essentially a convenience sample, however, as all subjects were descending the staircase without other traffic, and no bias was given as to who was measured, our survey should be reasonably random enough to test on.

n=26 and while a larger sample size would be preferably, a normal plot of our data shows a roughly normal distribution with only a slight negative skew.



As there is no information on our actual population mean or SD, we will use a one-tailed T-test. As we are reluctant to accuse the student body of sloth without ample evidence, we will set alpha at .02.

III. null mean = 5.57
sample mean= 7.443
n=26
Standard deviation of sample = 1.8615

T=5.1316
p= .000013262


IV. Our p-value is near zero and is definitely < p=.02 Thus, we reject the null hypothesis and find that our data suggests significant evidence towards the alternative hypothesis. The mean time for descending the stair case appears to be greater than that of the time for a rapid descent.


Extremely brief summary of a comparison between male/female descent times:

The average mean descent time for males was compared to that of females. A two-sample two-tailed t-test between the sample means was conducted. A p-value of .3216 was returned. We fail to reject the null hypothesis and find no evidence that male times differ significantly from female times.

Math ends here

So what did we just find? Quite simply, that students are lazy bastards. They are taking far too long to descend the staircase and possibly innocent bystanders are being caught behind them, unable to descend the staircase at the speed at which they would prefer. We must inform them of this travesty.

However, we also found that the times for males and females descending the stairs were not significantly different. This is a great victory for gender equality! The student body should be lauded for their achievement.

A sign was created to inform them of the results.



It was then posted, under the watchful eyes of several security cameras, at the bottom of the staircase, where it would be visible to everyone descending said staircase.




Success! Statistically speaking, of course.

Edit: Fixed a < sign.