Think Airports Are Chaotic? You Are Right.

jonfromspace writes "Nature is running a brief, but interesting article on Chaos Theory, (as opposed to KAOS) and how it relates to that damn airport shutle service. I knew there was no way to predict arrival times with any degree of certainty. >Also worth a read is this paper on applying Chaos Theory to fisheries management."

Sure is better now

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember during the late 1970s you could sometimes find OJ Simpson flying through the airport like Superman.

Re:Bunching buses

[panurge]

In fact there is supposed to be a paper about this though I have been unable to locate it.

One of the surprising conclusions is that on some routes the best time to arrive is just as a bus is leaving. There are a number of reasons for this. One is that the departing bus has reduced the queue length at the bus stop so you are more likely to get on the next bus. Another is that if the buses tend to group, in groups >= 3, if a bus is leaving the probability that it is not the last bus in the group is >0.5. If you arrive with no buses in sight, chances are you are in an inter-group period.

My favorite comment on the whole bus thing, however, came from a retired admiral who wrote a letter to the London Times: "Since the convoy system was introduced, not a single bus has been sunk by enemy action."