Shortcuts and the Best Route
Urban designers know the frustration of watching unofficial trails sprout on perfectly manicured lawns. These are desire paths: the physical evidence of the shortest distance between two points. But, while a straight line is efficient, it isn’t always optimal. The “best” route is a shifting balance of speed, energy, and the unknown. With your team, consider the logic of the shortcut and the science of the scenic route. How do humans, animals, and even slime molds decide what way to go? Should we always follow the path of least resistance?
- Traveling salesman problem | vector-based navigation | explore-exploit problem
- Route elasticity | Braess’s Paradox | dead reckoning | the Steiner Tree Problem
Key concepts
- User Equilibrium
- The state a network settles into when every traveller picks their own fastest route. It is stable, and it is usually not the arrangement that would be quickest for everyone together — which is the gap a new road can fall straight into.
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Every work — at a glance
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The worn trails that appear across grass wherever the official route takes too long — unfaked, continuous, free data on where people actually want to walk.
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What to know
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01
Efficient and optimal are not the same word. The shortest line ignores energy, safety and everything you would have passed, so a desire path can be the fastest way across a lawn and still be the wrong route to pave — and a Steiner network gets shorter by adding junctions nobody asked for.
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Across subjects
Theme connection
"Are We There Yet?"
Practice — a sample
SCIEach idea below helps plan efficient routes EXCEPT —
- A Braess's Paradox
- B The Salesman Problem
- C The desire path
- D Explore-exploit
- E The arrival fallacy
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