Monday, August 8, 2016

Skewed Fast Food

This is a view of the side of a small counter at a fast food restaurant in Snow Hill, Maryland. Patrons have slid this chair back and forth to sit at or leave the adjacent table. This chair movement has marred the paneling of the counter into a pattern that is skewed to the right: much more wear on the left with decreasing use and wear as the chair is set closer to the table. Of course, on the right, the chair's wear pattern is truncated since it must stop short of the table. On the left, we've got no wall to reveal the chair's position. The chair's wear is censored. What remains is a right skewed pattern of the frequency of use and wear. The pattern somewhat resembles the pattern of a sample from a right skewed exponential distribution.

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