The beauty of the newspaper.

I don't know why, but I always enjoy reading the Straits Times, maybe it's because it is always amusing to read some articles, and then laugh as you read the facts.

Due to the recent Prima Deli food crisis, when cakes were poisoned due to poor hygine, one reader decided to write in to express her view that 40% of tertiary students do not wash their hands after heading to the loo.

Facts are as such: She is assisting during exams and she had to escort students to the bathroom during, presumably, an exam.

Read: Exams.

Firstly, the fact that she said 40% is an interesting statistic. Unless she stood at the bathroom during a recess break, how could she conclude that 40% of the students she escorted can be said to be that of the nation's population? Moreover, you do not see heaps of students heading to the bathroom during an exam, where time is of the essence. During an exam, it would be surprising to see more than 10 head to the bathroom during a one and a half hour paper, because exam papers are usually structured in a way that you have just sufficient time to finish it, with maybe 2 minutes to check everything.

Anyone who studied statistics would know that if your sample size n is small, then your results would be extremely skewed and very likely to not be that of the population. Moreover, as the writer is female, maybe it is only the females who are the ones who are unhygienic (*runs*), because unless she goes to the gents as well, she cannot say the same for the guys.

Assuming that she is assisting the exam at a tertiary institution where all the students have an extremely weak bladder and heaps of them go to the toilet during the exam, again, time is of the essence. Do you seriously expect students to fully wash their hands with soap and water and allow it to run for over a minute? Most, including me, will simply wet our hands due to practice, before running back to their seat to continue working on the paper. It is simply understandable that, under such time constraints, one would put hygiene at a lower priority, if one can prioritize correctly.

I wouldn't mind anyone saying that us students are unhygienic if she was a teacher who makes random observations at her school's toilet, but seriously, get a better example if you are writing to the nation's newspaper, or you risk getting ridiculed.

Maybe I should write a response to the forum....