The Pudding made a game that challenged players to figure out the best way to mow a lawn. There is grass, there are obstacles, and you move the mower to cut all the grass. Then they analyzed player patterns in the context of the traveling salesman problem:
We wanted to create this mowing experiment after we read a study that found humans come impressively close to computer-calculated optimal solutions to this problem with fewer stops, and even do pretty good — just 11% less efficient than optimal — for 70+ stops. We recreated their chart below. As the stops increase, humans’ ability decreases. Would results be similar for mowing a lawn?
I like the move-by-move comparison between people who did the best and those who did the worst. When looking at the overall time spent to think during the game, the aggregates look similar. When looking at each spot, the difference is more obvious.
Tags: game, Pudding, traveling salesman
