Wait/walk dilemma

The Wait/walk dilemma occurs when waiting for a bus 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. The dilemma has been studied in an unpublished report entitled "Walk Versus Wait: The Lazy Mathematician Wins".cite web
url=http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/02/03/cellphones_remain_mum_in_tunnels/?page=full
title=Cellphones remain mum in tunnels
first=Noah
last=Bierman
publisher=The Boston Globe
date=2008-02-03] cite web
url=http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19726404.600-lazy-option-is-best-when-waiting-for-the-bus.html
title=Lazy option is best when waiting for the bus
publisher=New Scientist Magazine
date=2008-01-23] Anthony B. Morton's recent paper "A Note on Walking Versus Waiting" supports and extends Chen et al.'s results. [ cite web |url=http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.3653
title=A Note on Walking Versus Waiting
date=2008-02-25] Cyrus Aghamolla and Alexander Limonov's recent manuscript, "Walk Versus Wait: A Study in Triviality", presents an abstract statistical argument which trivially justifies the work of Chen et al. [ cite web |url=http://s1.zetaboards.com/in/math_papers/walk_vs_wait-a_study_in_triviality.pdf
title=Walk Versus Wait: A Study in Triviality
date=2008-03-02] Ramnik Arora's A Note on Walk versus Wait: Lazy Mathematician Wins points out and fixes some of the errors in Chen et al.'s argument; the result of Chen et al.'s paper still holds following Arora's corrections. [ cite web |url=http://arxiv.org/abs/0803.3106
title=A Note on Walk versus Wait: Lazy Mathematician Wins
date=2008-03-21]

Walk Versus Wait: The Lazy Mathematician Wins

Harvard mathematics major Scott D. Kominers first began fixating on the problem while walking from MIT to Harvard, which are more than a mile apart in Cambridge, Massachusetts along MBTA bus route 1. He enlisted the help of Caltech 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 the decision to walk should be final as opposed to waiting again at subsequent stops.

ee also

*Rendezvous problem

References

External links

[http://xxx.arxiv.org/pdf/0801.0297 Walk Versus Wait: The Lazy Mathematician Wins (PDF)]

[http://xxx.arxiv.org/pdf/0802.3653 A Note on Walking Versus Waiting (PDF)]

[http://xxx.arxiv.org/pdf/0803.3106 A Note on Walk versus Wait: Lazy Mathematician Wins (PDF)]

[http://www.scottkom.com/ Scott Kominers's Homepage]

[http://www.robwsinnott.com/ Robert Sinnott's Homepage]

[http://home.iitk.ac.in/~ramnik/ Ramnik Arora's Homepage]