Even When It’s Not The Most Efficient Route – Cellphone Data Shows That People Navigate By Keeping Their Destinations In Front Of Them
Carlo Ratti, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Think of your morning walk to work, school or your favorite coffee shop. Are you taking the shortest possible route to your destination? According to big data research that my colleagues and I conducted, the answer is no: People’s brains are not wired for optimal navigation.
Instead of calculating the shortest path, people try to point straight toward their destinations – we call it the “pointiest path” – even if it is not the most efficient way to walk.
As a researcher who studies urban environments and human behavior, I have always been interested in how people experience cities, and how studying this can tell researchers something about human nature and how we’ve evolved.
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