Im thinking of a something bizarre here, and I guess I always get these ideas when Im having a hot shower. Maybe it's the writing pad that evolves during a bath, due to the vapours forming on the glass of the shower or what Im not sure of. But here it goes.

 

The other day, I was driving fromWahsington DC to our home in North Carolina. The drive was about 7 hours and we started at about 4 during peak traffic hour. So here I was, stuck on a road with 3 lanes and traffic that's moving but about 30 mph slower than the recommended speed limit. I had to be home before 12 and was determined about it.

 

So in order to be faster, and not to get stuck in the slowest lane, I had to come up with a way to see if I am actually driving faster or not. Now my wife, S, constantly kept reminding me chaos theory. About how we would always get stuck in the slowest lane all the time. But I had to defy her. And defied her I did.

 

Heres my genius of an idea: I set markers or identifiers for me at the starting point of the discussion. I had a blue saab and a white chevy in the lanes besides me. So I figured out, I can play it this way, I will cut…change lanes only when the blue saab and white chevy are behind me in that lane or any other lane. Once I built a good amount of difference with those two that way, I then decided to change my markers, got a red buick and a town and country besides me now. Same logic applied again.

I kept on doing this till I think I got to make some leeway out of the traffic. By the time the traffic was cleared, I had the blue saab again closer to me but the white chevy and the new markers were all a couple of cars behind me.

 

So by driving a little dangerously I was able to devise a new way to beat the traffic. I am not sure if this logic or algorithm exists in the math world, but I would definitely like to dig deeper into it to see if there is anything that formulates this logic. The logic? In an unstable environment, set a reference point to yourself to measure the relative distance and realign over time to reset the reference point.

 

When I talked to S about this, she scoffed and told me that next time she is gonna put a timer in the shower.

 

PS: once the traffic was gone, the white chevy beat me again, but that's because he decided to drive faster than the speed limit + 10 rule. So all this could be futile.

Sent from my iPhone