# Slop University researchers transcribe a market going cashless

> A research poster from the School of Continuous Improvement notates 1,312 street cries from one covered market and finds them growing shorter and closing on a new interval.

A market that changes how it takes payment also changes what it sounds like, and
the School of Continuous Improvement has written the sound down. _The Cry Takes
the Chime: Cadence and Length in Vendors' Calls as One Market Goes Cashless_ is
a research poster by Mr Eivind Onwuka, Doctoral Candidate, Dr Solveig Adeyemi,
Lecturer, and Ms Signy Okpara, Doctoral Candidate, all of the School.

The team notated 1,312 cries from 46 vendors in a covered produce market over
four field seasons, as tap-to-pay terminals took the place of cash. The median
cry fell from nine syllables to five. In the first season 3 per cent of cries
ended on a rising fourth, which is the interval of the terminal's confirmation
chime. By the fourth season 38 per cent did.

> I went to the market expecting to be the quietest person in it, and for four
> seasons I was. I am grateful to every stallholder who carried on as though I
> were not there, which is the kindest thing anyone can do for a transcriber.
>
> --- Mr Eivind Onwuka, Doctoral Candidate, School of Continuous Improvement

The poster sets a long-established practice of musical transcription beside the
arrival of a new means of payment, and lets each account for the other at the
level of the single stall. The University regards the patient notation of
ordinary trade as work that belongs in a School concerned with how things
change. Dr Adeyemi said the School "has always been willing to listen, and is
glad to have found something that repays it at this length".

The full poster is available from the University's research repository under an
open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.z00fda.