Hà Nội: Khổ sở tìm chỗ đỗ xe

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Dear Dan,

I noticed that when I drive around the block looking for parking I spend a lot of time too far away from my destination (I live in Chicago, and hate the cold), so instead, I just wait until somebody leaves and take the spot. It proved to be more efficient, but my friends can't seem to stand it, and I can't do it when I'm not alone in the car. My question is why my friends find in intolerable waiting for someone to leave.

—Danny

The phenomenon you're encountering is aversion to idleness (không chịu được nếu không làm gì đó) There was a story a while ago about an airline that tried to optimize (tối ưu hóa) which carousel (băng chuyền) that the luggage would come out of. There was an engineer with this airline that realized that some carousels were close to some gates, and others were close to other gates. He wrote an algorithm (thuật toán) to try to figure out which carousels to send the luggage to so that it would be closest to where the plane was landing. Before this algorithm was created, travelers would get out of the plane, walk for a while and get to the carousel. Sometimes it was such a long walk that their luggage was waiting for them already, and they would pick it up and go home. In the new system, the carousel was much closer and people would walk a little bit, find the carousel and wait for their luggage. People hated this new system because they were standing in one place to wait for their luggage. This idleness was so unpleasant that people complained and the airline rejected this algorithm. My understanding is that they have not gone the whole way in the reverse and tried to get the luggage in the farthest carousel possible, but maybe it is something they are still working on.

Bài trước: Vì sao nhiều sinh viên cố tình trốn vé xe buýt?