the shoddy statistics of parking

parking sometimes can seriously be a bastard shrouded in utter frustration, wrapped in used toilet paper, burning in hell while being used as a pin cushion.

think about looking for someone. we learn when we're 3 - or for the slow ones, at 15 - to stay put when we get lost. imagine a 100x100 matrix...and overlay it on disneyland. each cell will represent one section, or one ten-thousandth of disneyland. if you get lost and you stay put, there is a one out of ten thousand (1 / 10,000) chance of being found. throw in some variables like rationale and sensibility and the probability increases. but imagine now that you are the world's stupidest statistician and you start wandering around. now, at any given moment, there is a one out of one hundred million (1 / 100,000,000) chance of finding your worthless face. go buy a lottery ticket.

now think of looking for a parking spot. on a single street of metered parking, the chances of everyone having parked at the same time is fairly small. and in the event that they do, the chance that they all leave at the same time is equally, if not far more unlikely, UNLESS they are all part of the same entourage (carpool you baboons). anyway, people are constantly coming and going thanks to life's bustle along with the fear of a $50 ticket. thus, it would behoove you to sit tight for a second to wait for a spot because someone will eventually leave. the chance that you will come upon a spot as someone is leaving (two favorable incidents coinciding), is pretty small. but you might halve that denominator by staying put.

so i have summed up this entire concept in a haphazardous phrase: lawrence's ten minute rule. every ten minutes or less, someone will leave. if there are no meters or limits and the cars are covered in leaves, layers of dust, and bird poop, you might want to grab a laptop and a few movies.

we could sit around and make an algorithm, run some modeling, plug in as many variables as comes to mind, integrate supply-demand equations, and run integrals on these, but you're probably better off parking a mile away and burning off your big buns in that time. :)