Baskets |
Monday, 17th May 2004 |
The entrence of the supermarket has two types of baskets:
big and small.
- one pile of big ones
- and one pile of small ones
Chosing one is easy.
It is my experience that the small basket is the perfect size for me.
Groceries from a small basket fit exactly into my small backpack.
At the cashier all groceries exit the basket.
There is a pile of empty baskets of the customers before me.
Sometimes this is a neat pile, but most of the time it is chaotic.
The chaos is easily explained.
Customers try to create
one pile of baskets.
Big into big fits.
Small into big fits.
Small into small fits.
But big into small leads to chaos.
This looks like chances for chaos are one out of four.
But a pile of 5 baskets has a large chance for chaos as shown by the following table:
Number of baskets |
Chances for neatness |
Chances for chaos |
1 |
100%           |
0% |
2 |
75%         |
 25% |
3 |
50%      |
    50% |
4 |
31%    |
      69% |
5 |
19%   |
       81% |
What to do?
- The best option would be to abolish the big baskets.
Chaos won't have a chance anymore.
- Abolishing small baskets would be another option.
But I don't like it as I'll loose the guarantee of bringing all my groceries home in my backpack.
- Two seperate pile would be the best alternative.
But two piles is too chaotic for the Dutch.
Chances are hight that they'll try to make
one pile, with inevitable chaos as a result.
Conclusions
- Long live the users of small baskets.
They never turn neatness into chaos.
- Don't strive for unrealistic order, but accept a bit of chaos.
I'm not chaotic, but realistic!
Till
next nut,
Nut