On Tue, Jul 17, 2007 at 10:14:20PM -0700, Stewart Stremler spake thusly: > > > The crazy math of airline ticket pricing: > > http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_09_02.html > > "Admittedly, in order to study the airline pricing problem mathematically > and obtain these results, de Marcken had to make some simplifying > assumptions that don't apply to real airline travel, such as allowing an > unlimited number of destinations, flights of unlimited length, or > arbitrarily long lists of rules. But the implications for real airline > pricing are unavoidable." > > Okay, once you have an unlimited number of destinations and allow for > flights of unlimited length, yeah, I buy *that* is undecidable. >
> In the Real World, however, we have a finite number of airplanes and > pilots, each with a finite distance they can fly (think refueling), > between finite points, using a finite set of rules for pricing. > > That's a finite problem, and /that/ means it's decidable. But prices are mostly based on demand right? They want to charge the market price for a limited resource. You have to be able to predict demand. That makes it undecideable. And crazy things affect demand. Not just weekends or Christmas and things you would normally expect but around February flights into SFO get expensive because all of the asians are flying back home to celebrate Chinese New Year. How many are flying home? How well did the economy do? What is the strength of the dollar? And what will it be in two to three months so we can estimate what the demand will be then which affects our ticket prices now? And of course don't forget varying prices of fuel in different places/airports, varying landing fees (quite considerable), varying costs for terminal space, etc. Then there is weather to take into account. Flying back east is more likely to get you a delay as it is in the west. From: http://www.franz.com/success/customer_apps/data_mining/itastory.php3 "Calculating ticket prices and flight schedules can often be more complex than flying an airplane. There can be as many as 50 different types of rules associated with one fare -- days it's available, which flights, number of seats, etc. This can add up to an overwhelming number of scheduling and pricing combinations." So there are a bunch more considerations. And I'm sure that is just the beginning. -- Tracy Reed Check out my blog and photos at http://tracyreed.org This message is cryptographically signed for your protection. Key fingerprint = D4A8 4860 535C ABF8 BA97 25A6 F4F2 1829 9615 02AD
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