Thursday, April 2, 2009

Which way to drive to Emory

I usually use one of the following ways to drive to Emory -

- Freedom Pkwy (75S-> Freedom Pkwy->Mooreland->Briarcliff) (PATH A)
- Lavista (75S->85N-> Lavista->Clifton) (PATH B)
- N. Druid hills (75S->85N-> N. Druid Hills->Briarcliff) (PATH C)

Below is a model that I have created using the following 3 attributes
- Average time taken for travel
- % of a possible congestion
- Ease of driving

For average time I created a utility lookup table which is the following utility curve based on my preferences.



Similarly I created a utility lookup table for % of possible congestion see below



Ease of driving is made up of # of red lights(less are preferred), # of lanes of traffic (more are preferred),


After plotting the values of utilities for these 3 attributes I created the series graph and noticed that Path A is dominated by both Path B and Path C.




So I should choose between path A and path B. If I value .1 utility of Average time i.e. decrease in Average time from 42 minutes to 40 minutes same as decrease in .6 drop in utility i.e. increase of % possibility of congestion from 6% to 10% then I should be indifferent between these paths.
~ (0.1)x = (0.6)y
--> x = 6y
Where x is the utility of average time and y is the utility of probability of congestion.

However if my valuation is not the same as x= 6y when then I could arrive at an optimum path.

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