Where to park your car, according to math
1–10 of 53 posts
Re: Where to park your car, according to math
#2I usually try to be prudent driver but its hard to tell when to stop looking for empty spots as you get closer to the exit.
Re: Where to park your car, according to math
#3I usually try to be prudent driver but its hard to tell when to stop looking for empty spots as you get closer to the exit.
Most shopping centres have entrances near the front and are designed to make you circle out toward the far spaces. So everybody ends up prudent or optimistic (== those that circle back hoping someone left since they last drove past the entrance)
Re: Where to park your car, according to math
#4Sounds like the Secretary Problem, which involves optimal stopping theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem
The naive answer is 1/e (where e is the base of the natural logarithm). If you have N applications, reject ~N/e applications and choose the first applicant who is better than every previous applicant.
Re: Where to park your car, according to math
#5I thought I had read this before. Here is the link to the original blog post from the institute that did the research.
https://www.santafe.edu/news-center/news/where-how-park-your...
Re: Where to park your car, according to math
#6Other factors: getting a bit of exercise, wanting to be away from the busiest areas to avoid your car being dinged.
Re: Where to park your car, according to math
#7I thought I had read this before. Here is the link to the original blog post from the institute that did the research. https://www.santafe.edu/news-center/news/where-how-park-your...
You can read the paper on arxiv: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.06612.pdf
Re: Where to park your car, according to math
#8Other factors: getting a bit of exercise, wanting to be away from the busiest areas to avoid your car being dinged.
I always try and park away from the busiest areas for the same reasons but, purely from observation, it's obvious most people don't since the area closest to the store entrance is almost always utilised the most.
I do often wonder why people are so lazy or so busy that saving on walking an extra few yards is so important to them?
Re: Where to park your car, according to math
#9I usually try to be prudent driver but its hard to tell when to stop looking for empty spots as you get closer to the exit.
I'm the optimistic driver and the childish enjoyment of finding that spot near the front when the whole parking lot is full is worth the back tracking when it fails. In reality the meek approach isn't really terrible in the grand scheme and you get more exercise.
Re: Where to park your car, according to math
#10Other factors: getting a bit of exercise, wanting to be away from the busiest areas to avoid your car being dinged.
Math, like economic rationalism, is only as good as your model and assumptions. GIGO.