Graffiti Gives Glimpse Into Sex, Happiness On College Campus
An IT worker turned graffiti researcher unveiled his quirky research and compiled it into lovely graphs featuring all the lovely graffiti one might expect in a library bathroom.
Quinn Dombrowski studied the bathrooms, study areas and whiteboards of a University of Chicago library looking for indicators of a slew of things from happiness to lust, even genitalia.
Dombrowski also put all the information together into a handy little time graph. He postulated a number of things from the graph, but noted that few references to sex might mean people are actually having sex instead of drawing penises on bathroom walls.
My favorite part of his research was how scientific he made smiley and frowny faces.
One possible metric for measuring happiness is the classic “smiley face” and its negative counterpart, the “frowny face.”
On these grounds, students lean markedly towards happiness, with over 63% smiley faces. (See fig. 1.) A superficial look at the textual data suggests an even stronger case for an assessment of happiness, with 10 occurrences of “happy” vs. 3 occurrences of “sad.”
Read more of Dombrowski's research at Inkling Magazine.
[Images via Inkling Magazine]
