Presh Talwalkar, who has created one of the best blogs on mathematics and game theory on the web (Mind Your Decisions), recently wrote up this blog post on parking space strategy. It includes this interesting excerpt from the book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do:
It seems that the people who actively look for the “best” parking place inevitably spend more total time getting to the store than those people who simply grab the first spot they see * * * [Researchers] observed two distinct strategies: “cycling” and “pick a row, closest space.” They compared the results. “What was interesting,” [lead researcher Andrew Velkey found], “was although the individuals cycling were spending more time driving looking for a parking space, on average they were no closer to the door, time-wise or distance-wise, than people using ‘pick a row, closest space.’”
So, what strategy do you use when you are searching for an elusive parking space (on campus, at the mall, downtown, etc.) and why? Do you follow the same strategy each time, or do you use a mixed strategy, “cycling” on some days and “picking a row” on others?
(As an aside, as far as prior probability is concerned, since we like walking, and since we also prefer corner parking spaces to “sandwich” spaces, prior probability actually searches for the furthest parking space possible from the door. This reduces our search time, though it increases our walk time.)
