London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS • Hacker News Board

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#101

Post by w1ntermute » Tue, Nov 11, 2014, 2:05 PM UTC

jarek wrote: post #83

w1ntermute wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making the common mistake of disregarding disruptive innovation[0] at its early stages. Just because it starts out as only of low quality[1] doesn't mean that it will stay that way, or for long. 0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation 1: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Disruptiv...

You're making the common mistake of regarding high quality technology as inevitable. Just because it starts out as only of low quality[0] doesn't mean that it will improve, or fast. Google Maps directions is pretty disruptive tech, right? Add 10 years of experience, lots of roads, lots of time to gather data, real-time traffic info, and when I ask it for directions from my current location in inner London to a place…

Setting aside your snide tone[0], the mode of transit shown by default in Google Maps has absolutely nothing to do with quality.

0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsehole

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#102

Post by dalke » Tue, Nov 11, 2014, 2:21 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #55

jdmichal wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In relation to your comment about the review: If anything less than 5 stars is unsatisfactory in Uber's eyes, why do they even have stars? If the rating is boolean anyway (5-stars or not-5-stars), then just put a single choice: Was this ride satisfactory? It shouldn't be my responsibility to know that rating a driver who was slightly late or slightly lost 4 stars is a Bad Thing. However, if you ask me whether that sa…

Hmmm... are you supposed to rate 5-stars for acceptable service? I've been rating 3 by default - then plus or minus depending on extraordinary things.

I just came across this in watching an enjoyable LISA presentation by Elizabeth Zwicky. At http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=C4r... is a story about customer feedback for a company which has, broadly speaking, engineers and admins.

Quoting from http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=C4r...:

"Engineers do not give out 5s. If you tell an engineer that the possible rating scale is 1 to 5 and they like you, they give you a 4. Because tomorrow they might love you and then they would give you a 5. They probably won't, but they might, so they give you a 4 so that they have room. We all are totally okay with this. But the world is also full of this other class of people who if they like you give you a 5. They're quite consistent about it. 'I like you. I see nothing wrong with that. I'm giving you a 5.'"

The graph (with, admittedly, artificial data meant to portray an example) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=C4r... shows it most clearly, with the satisfaction numbers from engineering clearly trending down. Apparently, engineers don't like to fill out forms, while admins do, so satisfaction survey results also have a sample bias in favor of the 5s of admin staff.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#103

Post by jarek » Tue, Nov 11, 2014, 2:35 PM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #101

jarek wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making the common mistake of regarding high quality technology as inevitable. Just because it starts out as only of low quality[0] doesn't mean that it will improve, or fast. Google Maps directions is pretty disruptive tech, right? Add 10 years of experience, lots of roads, lots of time to gather data, real-time traffic info, and when I ask it for directions from my current location in inner London to a place…

Setting aside your snide tone[0], the mode of transit shown by default in Google Maps has absolutely nothing to do with quality. 0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsehole

> the mode of transit shown by default in Google Maps has absolutely nothing to do with quality.

Of course not. Technology will eat the world and improve on and replace humans in all complex cases. Like deciding what mode of transport to use in central London. Because disruption.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#104

Post by goatforce5 » Tue, Nov 11, 2014, 3:03 PM UTC

rahimnathwani wrote: post #76

goatforce5 wrote: post #10

Several times I had London cabbies stop the fare meter when I showed them (the same) short cut near where I lived. "No, don't go to the lights, turn down this lane!". All of them had their brains explode that there was a better way that saved about 200 meters and 30 seconds of travel. I'm not sure if there's an (unwritten?) rule that you get the rest of the fare for free if they're taking you a long way, but there wa…

Does google maps know this route?

Just checked, and yes it does.

As I said, the route seemed really obvious to me. It was a quicker way to get from Kingsland Rd to Hackney Rd, so it was two major roads in central London.

The short cut involved taking a narrow laneway, and i'm guessing something about that lane changed meaning it had only just become accessible.

I also had cabbies turn off the meter late at night. I'd light up a cigarette (back when that was allowed), they'd ask if I cared if they lit up too, and once a guy said "Ahhh, I was heading your way anyway" and he turned off the meter. I lived in East London surrounded by cab drivers, so maybe they were being neighbourly.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#105

Post by igonvalue » Tue, Nov 11, 2014, 4:34 PM UTC

jes5199 wrote: post #5

GPS routing is awful compared to a person who knows their way around a city. Uber drivers in hilly cities like San Francisco never, ever think to avoid climbing right up and down the steepest hills - the algorithms don't tell them not to, there's no traffic and it's not a low speed limit , it just sucks for other reasons. I had a driver last week who had never heard of Valencia St, and then misunderstood the GPS voic…

That's a very insightful article you linked. I had always wondered why Airbnb reviews were so uniformly high, even when not merited. I'd found some explanations involving Airbnb hiding negative reviews, but never quite connected the fact that I personally felt uncomfortable leaving negative reviews with the fact that other people generally didn't.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#106

Post by Evolved » Tue, Nov 11, 2014, 4:43 PM UTC

I'm a fan of the 3 yes/no question survey. It doesn't take much longer than rating 1-5 unless you want to add comments.

Would you use our service again?

Was there anything we could have done better? (+comment)

Would you recommend us to your friends and family?

Also, let's not forget how people sometimes lose their ability to be objective when they're upset which may manifest itself in the form of a less than 5 star rating for a driver that made 1 small error or said something innocuous that we took offense to.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#107

Post by igonvalue » Tue, Nov 11, 2014, 4:47 PM UTC

I thought the coolest fact about the Knowledge is that it actually induces observable physical changes in brain anatomy.

> She has discovered that the posterior hippocampus, the area of the brain known to be important for memory, is bigger in London taxi drivers than in most people, and that a successful Knowledge candidate’s posterior hippocampus enlarges as he progresses through the test.

It seems that, like most things, there might be a tradeoff involved. According to this paper[0],

> However, they were significantly worse at forming and retaining new associations involving visual information. We consider possible reasons for this decreased performance including the reduced grey matter volume in the anterior hippocampus of taxi drivers...

[0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2670971/

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#108

Post by darkmighty » Tue, Nov 11, 2014, 8:27 PM UTC

_pmf_ wrote: post #84

piggity wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't it be the service's responsibility to determine what you are rating as a median score and then recalibrate your scores to their drivers? i.e. If I always rate 3, but sometimes rate 1; then that might be similar to someone always rating 5 but sometimes rating 1-3.

> i.e. If I always rate 3, but sometimes rate 1; then that might be similar to someone always rating 5 but sometimes rating 1-3. Ah, but then a user might throw an Internet Fit(tm) and cause a public outcry about ratings being manipulated by Uber etc. etc.

There's no way to easily verify how companies are actually calculatign the displayed ratings, and I doubt the average user would care or be savvy enough to find out. I assume it's a given most services see the input ratings as a personal indicator modulated by how reliable/benevolant/... each user is. Reddit votes, for example, are fairly nonlinear and visibility priority is even more complicated.

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#109

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Nov 12, 2014, 7:36 AM UTC

custardcream wrote: post #94

jedc wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must not have read the article. There's an expectation that drivers keep their knowledge current. Certainly the examiners keep their knowledge current and test based on that.

I did. I really don't think you understand the scale of the problem.

[deleted]

Re: London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

#110

Post by Havoc » Fri, Nov 14, 2014, 10:41 PM UTC

noselasd wrote: post #90

Havoc wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the kind that matter though: Is there an accident & associated traffic jam today on road X or not.

A cab driver will get that information too.

No he won't. This guy just spent 4 YEARS memorizing maps...his honour is not going to allow him to rock a GPS and any radio'd info isn't going to include the same second-by-second route computations that the GPS does.