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The wait/walk dilemma occurs when waiting for a
Excerpts from the book "Never Trust a Calm Dog and Other Rules of Thumb", as reproduced in the Gatesway Messenger
May 22, 1996. Retrieved 9 November 2018 While as an undergraduate mathematics major at Harvard, Scott D. Kominers first began fixating on the problem while walking from
"Walk Versus Wait: The Lazy Mathematician Wins" (PDF)
"A Note on Walking Versus Waiting" (PDF)
"A Note on Walk versus Wait: Lazy Mathematician Wins" (PDF)
Scott Kominers's Homepage
Robert Sinnott's Homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wait walk dilemma Bus terminology Game theory
The wait/walk dilemma occurs when waiting for a bus
A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for cha ...
at a bus stop, when the duration of the wait may exceed the time needed to arrive at a destination by another means, especially walking.
Some work on this problem was featured in the 2008 "Year in Ideas" issue of ''The New York Times Magazine''.
Research
The dilemma has been studied in an unpublished report entitled "Walk Versus Wait: The Lazy Mathematician Wins". Anthony B. Morton's paper "A Note on Walking Versus Waiting" supports and extends Chen et al.'s results. Ramnik Arora's "A Note on Walk versus Wait: Lazy Mathematician Wins" discusses what he believes to be some of the errors in Chen et al.'s argument; the result of Chen et al.'s paper still holds following Arora's alleged corrections. As early as 1990, writer Tom Parker had observed that "walking is faster than waiting for a bus if you're going less than a mile".May 22, 1996. Retrieved 9 November 2018 While as an undergraduate mathematics major at Harvard, Scott D. Kominers first began fixating on the problem while walking from
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
to Harvard, which are more than a mile apart in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston ...
along MBTA bus route 1. He enlisted the help of Caltech
The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...
physics major Justin G. Chen and Harvard statistics major Robert W. Sinnott to perform the analysis.
Their paper concludes that it is usually mathematically quicker to wait for the bus, at least for a little while. But once made, the decision to walk should be final instead of waiting again at subsequent stops.
Interstellar travel
The corresponding problem in interstellar travel is called the wait calculation, which tries to determine the optimal time to wait for technological progress to improve spaceship speeds before committing to the journey.See also
*Bus bunching
In public transport, bus bunching, clumping, convoying, piggybacking or platooning is a phenomenon whereby two or more transit vehicles (such as buses or trains) that were scheduled at regular intervals along a common route instead bunch togethe ...
* Rendezvous problem
References
External links
"Walk Versus Wait: The Lazy Mathematician Wins" (PDF)
"A Note on Walking Versus Waiting" (PDF)
"A Note on Walk versus Wait: Lazy Mathematician Wins" (PDF)
Scott Kominers's Homepage
Robert Sinnott's Homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wait walk dilemma Bus terminology Game theory