Howdy, Why does it seem like the other lane in heavy traffic is always going faster? Depends on who you ask. Here's two contradictory answers with explanations.
www.stat.duke.edu/chance/133.redelmeier.pdf plus.maths.org/issue17/features/traffic/index.html The first, by Redelmeier and Tibshirani, says it's an illusion. Put simplistically, one perceives the other lane as moving faster, even when it is in fact going slower, because during the times when it makes gains one spends more time being overtaken than when passing since passing cars are more spread out. They conducted experiments to back this up. On the other hand, Nick Bostrom says it really is going faster. He asserts that Redelmeier and Tibshirani are falling prey to the observation selection effect. Put simlistically, since passing cars are less densly packed than those being passed, any randomly chosen vehicle is most likley a vehicle being passed. Therefore, the other lane is moving faster. I hope you find these articles interesting, jsh __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes http://finance.yahoo.com
