Paths
by submission
Image text: It's true, I think about this all the time.
This comic provided by Rik 't Hoff. http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=516678350
This comic centers around the consideration what shortest path is available to a person travelling by foot. Cueball has to travel a rectangular distance, which (I believe) is part over pavement and part over some other material not really meant to tread on (grass, sand or granite). When Cueball goes to follow the pavement, he has to walk for 60 seconds. But when he traverses using the non-walkable material, he can cut up to 26% of his time. So, he thinks every time he has to travel this rectangle, which is a very human question. Would you rather walk the straight path, or be kind of illegal (to some standards) and use the non-walkable material in your way?
January 5th, 2012
It applies when one is traveling by Segway, too!
January 5th, 2012
As Randall says, I think many people consider this issue (although my fiancée swears she doesn’t). wherever there is a bending path through a grassy area, you will inevitably find worn paths in the grass that connect curves in a straighter line (Cutting Corners is a very common one – even at street corners). The wider one cuts the corner, the close one gets to simply taking a straight line path between start and finish.
The wearing of the grass might be a measuable means to determine the socialogical question of how briefly are people willing to go against the “norm” and cut the path by walking on the grass? I think most people are generally willing only to make little cuts near the corner, while a few will walk all the way accross as Randall’s diagram proposes.
January 6th, 2012
Depends on just how far off from straight the paths are, and how much of a hurry the people are in.
The high school I went to, for example, had a courtyard in the middle of it. Rectangular just shy of square, mostly aligned with the edges towards the compass directions, and with a small, narrow extension off the bottom of the southwest corner(off the southeast too…sort of).
The doors into the courtyard were: In the middle of the north face, the northwest corner, the southeast corner, and at the end of the extension off the southwest corner. (the southeast ‘extension’ was really more of a porch and had doors all down the side of it, as well as at the end).
The paths were laid out with a square roughly around the perimeter of the courtyard (quite a ways off the north wall, however), with two crossing paths forming an X between the four corners of the square path, and another going to the center of the X from the center of the north face. Each door had a path leading from it to the square path. The funny part here was that the northeast arm of the X was completely superfluous: with no door anywhere near that corner, it never got used.
It was quite crowded when I started there in 7th grade, and the 5 minutes between classes was barely enough to get to your next one sometimes. One of the results was an additional path: from the southwest corner of the square to the top center. This ‘path’ was of the dirt variety, worn there by the numerous students who cut across to shorten the journey between the north door and the southwest door. The funny part was, they’d walk up the straight path to the north door, but not continue down to the center of the ‘X’. The corners on both ends of this path were in much the same condition, from people cutting them.
A few years after I started, the school paved this ad-hoc path, and both of the cut corners.
February 6th, 2012
Off-topic curiosity – your high school was 7th grade through 12th grade? I’ve never heard of that. Everywhere I’ve lived in the US there are 3 levels in the public school system: Elementary (K through 5th or 6th), Junior High (or Middle School) (6th or 7th through 8th or 9th), and High School (9th or 10th through 12th). Just wondering how common that is.
In my child’s current district (which is quite large), there are something like 15 elementary schools that funnel into 5 middle schools that funnel into 3 high schools. The high schools are pretty large with grades 9 through 12. I imagine adding 2 more grades would make them nearly unmanageable.
March 22nd, 2012
the original author probably did not go to school in the US. In some Australian states, for example, high school is 7th-12th grade.
January 9th, 2012
There is/was a collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art that I got to see around 2007. It was a collection of photographs label “shortcuts” or something to that effect. It was simply a series of photographs showing various paths worn into grass where a shorter route had been created. It was interesting for the number of shortcuts that only left the original pathway for 10 feet or less and could not have saved the traveler more than 3 seconds. Examples such as those make me believe that Randell is not alone in feeling the conflict between society and directness.
January 28th, 2012
Lots of people use it.
C.f. the desire paths/desire lines on grass (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path http://www.flickr.com/groups/desire_paths/)
In town, the desire line can’t be see… but you can use it most of the time:
in the suburbs, most of the time, there is no cars;
in the central, there is a lot of pedestrians, who have priority : start walking out of the walking lines, other pedestrians will follow you. (it’s not a pb for cars : they just arrive at the crossroad red light 5 seconds later… but behind the same car : you only offer them to stay less time at the traffic light)