Elevators are not erratic.

Back to blogging after long, I am here so that I do not disappoint my fans or people who follow my blogs. Hey, guess what, this blog has something to do with disappointment.

Aim : Trying to figure out why not always the best guys finish first.

Scenario 1: Consider this scene. Read carefully

--Begin--
There are two trees, one on each side of a wall of an ancient fort. The fort was built by a king. One day he went to see a "fakir"(Adapting to the classic method of italicizing when "Not so Non-Indian" authors refer to "Indian" terms in Italics.)who was well renowned for bringing prosperity to people. The fakir gave him a rupee and said get whatever you want to buy with it and it will bring prosperity to your country. Disappointed, the king went to the bazaar wondering what he would buy with just a rupee. He saw a person selling seeds. So he approached him and asked how much for a rupee, the keeper replied, as many as you can lift with a finger.

First answer this, how would you keep your finger to lift the maximum seeds with 1 finger ?

The king dipped his hands into the pile and lifted only 2 seeds. Many smart asses like you and me, would have first dipped their fingers into a viscous liquid, so that more seeds would stick to the fingers.

Moving on with the story, he planted the two seeds, one on each side of the fort wall, and later the one inside was healthier than the one outside, but the one outside, bore a lot more fruits [Say 1:100]. King was amazed, when he took better care of the one inside the fort, and it was more healthy, how could the one outside bear better and more fruits? But his question was, how will it bring prosperity to the country ??
--End--

Elevators solve a lot of priority related problems of our life. We can actually learn a lot from them. They know when to go up, when to come down, who should wait and who should not. Now I will answer the king's question with another example, what I call as the classic elevator example.

--Begin--
One day I was having lunch on the penultimate floor of a moderately tall building. After I finished my food, I headed towards the elevator. There were 2 elevators on either side of the building. Now when I went there this is what I observed. I was on the 11th floor. One of the elevator was on the 9th floor and one was on the 5th floor and both were going down. So which elevator should I seek. Forget about me, which one would you ? Is it not the one that that is on the fifth and going down. I did both. Now it happened so, that the other elevator(the one on ninth floor and going down) reached back first. How could an elevator possibly, moving 4 floors behind, come back first??
--End--
Before you see my explanation, I should be convinced you got the problem.



Now the answer to this solves the king's question. Lets assume the scene on any floor. People who see the elevator that is moving ahead, will seek it for sure. Now lets say there are people on all floors. So there will be more number of seeks for the elevator that is moving ahead, than the one that is moving behind. So it will slow down and the one lagging will lead.

Now that's a periodic behavior. Not only that, if there were smart asses like me on all the floors, all of them would seek the one that is behind. Isnt it ?? think of the consequences then. And if the building is too tall, say 1000 storeys, then also the behavior becomes highly unpredictable.

Now the king being dumb, we assume, all his subjects will be dumber. And as the system of government is monarchy, we assume it is not a big kingdom, even if it is , it wont stay for a long period of time. Also we assume that the area of observation is restricted to just both sides of the fort.

Can you think of any answer to the kings question ? Comment now...