When I was really small, I was very frightened of being lost. Its really scary when you are so tiny and all the grown-ups around you are so huge that your vision is like 100% blocked in crowded places. Today, I got lost again. I was at this church near the Commonwealth MRT when I suddenly realized that Denise was no longer within my sight. Darn, I had a few options:
- Look for her pro-actively in the church building
- Stay at one place and hope she will find me
What will you do if you were in my place?
Well, I analyzed the situation a little and came to the conclusion that it will be better if I just stayed put. I reasoned this way:
If there are say 5 different locations in church, and if both of us were wandering around at random to find each other. Assuming that we will reach a new location after each turn, this will mean that we will have a 20% chance of finding each other each turn.
Alternatively, if I were to remain in the same location, Denise will have a 20% chance of finding me during the first turn, 25% chance of find me during the second turn, 33% chance… and will definitely find me at the 5th turn as she has explored the entire church premise.
| Turn 1 | Turn 2 | Turn 3 | Turn 4 | Turn 5 | |
| Proactively searching | 20% | 20% | 20% | 20% | 20% |
| Staying Put | 20% | 25% | 33% | 50% | 100% |
So I stayed put… and lucky for me she found me after 5 minutes… Looking at it, maybe I was just plain lucky. The model had some inherent flaws, i.e.
What if Denise had also thought about the matter in the same logical way and had just opted to stay put hoping that I will be the proactive party?