The Unisex Bathroom: Fairness versus Performance

The Unisex Bathroom is an interesting problem in resource allocation that is useful for illustrative purposes in the study of computer operating systems and parallel processing [1, 9]. The Unisex Bathroom problem consists of a bathroom with n stalls and some number of males and females that share the bathroom. A male or female may be using a stall in the bathroom, waiting to use the bathroom, or doing something else. This paper will analyze different strategies that can be used to allocate bathroom stalls to the males and females. Each strategy will be measured by the following criteria: deadlock, denial, fairness and performance (wait time). This paper will contain ideal and realistic goals for any strategy. Some strategies could result in denial, a situation where some individuals may never get to use the bathroom. The best strategies are measured by fairness and performance. Measured data for some strategies will be included in this paper.