To find the best parking spot, do the math

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

by hhs • 7 years ago

11 10 7 years ago

arstechnica.com

11235813213455• 7 years ago

or use a bike and park wherever you want while avoiding a bunch of pollution

saagarjha• 7 years ago

Bikes aren’t always practical, unfortunately :(

emj2• 7 years ago

You can always make choices that make bicycles practical, has been a very good ROI for me, but for the last 70 years many people have made investments based on the premises that bicycles are not practical. With so much sunk capital in something, alternatives might seem impractical.

mierle• 7 years ago

First, assume a spherical car...

AznHisoka• 7 years ago

"Once you start being completely realistic, [every parking situation is different,] and you lose the possibility of explaining anything."

So to utilize this strategy, you need to have an ideal parking that matches the author’s utopian version, which is highly unlikely. got it.

and how is this useful to me again?

mjevans• 7 years ago

It can be useful as a basis for discussing provably poor parking spot seeking algorithms; since an optimal algorithm depends on so many variables that's usually past the point of being worth splitting hairs.

lolc• 7 years ago

I often find it useful to look at systems in terms of pressure distributions. I don't know about parking lots, but looking for seating in trains is similar. There I visualize people as molecules in a gas. They tend to distribute evenly. However the passages between cars are high-friction so pressure differences show there. As I walk between cars I can gauge the pressure differential and whether it's sensible to continue walking that direction.

For the parking lot it would have to be a column of air. As you descend towards the entrance, pressure increases. The rate of the pressure increase forecasts saturation.

pmiller2• 7 years ago

It seems to me that instead of using physics inspired reasoning on the problem, it would be better to model it as a multiplayer game of perfect information. Under suitable simplifications, a Nash equilibrium exists, but then the question becomes: how close is reality to this simplified scenario?

To find the best parking spot, do the math

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