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posted by martyb on Friday September 27 2019, @01:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the assume-a-spherical-car dept.

The next time you're hunting for a parking spot, mathematics could help you identify the most efficient strategy, according to a recent paper in the Journal of Statistical Mechanics. It's basically an optimization problem: weighing different variables and crunching the numbers to find the optimal combination of those factors. In the case of where to put your car, the goal is to strike the optimal balance of parking close to the target—a building entrance, for example—without having to waste too much time circling the lot hunting for the closest space.

Paul Krapivsky of Boston University and Sidney Redner of the Santa Fe Institute decided to build their analysis around an idealized parking lot with a single row (a semi-infinite line), and they focused on three basic parking strategies. A driver who employs a "meek" strategy will take the first available spot, preferring to park as quickly as possible even if there might be open spots closer to the entrance. A driver employing an "optimistic" strategy will go right to the entrance and then backtrack to find the closest possible spot.

Finally, drivers implementing a "prudent" strategy will split the difference. They might not grab the first available spot, figuring there will be at least one more open spot a bit closer to the entrance. If there isn't, they will backtrack to the space a meek driver would have claimed immediately.

[...] Based on their model, the scientists concluded that the meek strategy is the least effective of the three, calling it "risibly inefficient" because "many good parking spots are unfilled and most cars are parked far from the target."

[...] "On average, the prudent strategy is less costly," the authors concluded. "Thus, even though the prudent strategy does not allow the driver to take advantage of the presence of many prime parking spots close to the target, the backtracking that must always occur in the optimistic strategy outweighs the benefit." Plenty of people might indeed decide that walking a bit farther is an acceptable tradeoff to avoid endlessly circling a crowded lot hunting for an elusive closer space. Or maybe they just want to rack up a few extra steps on their FitBit.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/09/to-find-the-best-parking-spot-do-the-math/


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  • (Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Friday September 27 2019, @05:12PM (1 child)

    by Rupert Pupnick (7277) on Friday September 27 2019, @05:12PM (#899644) Journal

    Given that there is so much variation in traffic density versus available parking, how can these guys possibly expect these broad strategic generalizations to be taken seriously?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27 2019, @09:15PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27 2019, @09:15PM (#899709)

    In academia, it's publish or perish. These guys got published in the Journal of Statistical Mechanics. That means they survive for another few semesters.

    What is published doesn't have to make sense or be taken seriously. It just has to be published. (It didn't hurt that one of the authors, Sidney Redner, was a past Editorial Board member of the Journal that it was published in.)