SPUG: New Meeting Location: Update

William Julien moonbeam at catmanor.com
Sun Oct 17 13:04:04 CDT 1999


>
>Sure, William's Perl program to calculate driving distances is cool, and
>as the Instructor for his 2/99 "Perl + CGI" class I'm proud to see him
>using Perl creatively, and it's fun to go hog-wild imagining measurable
>parameters that might relate to meeting attendance, but the conspicuous
>lack of smiley emoticons in these recent posts suggest that you guys
>are taking these objective parameters much too seriously!  After all,
>we're trying to predict human behavior here (likelihood of attending
>meetings), not the amount of fuel used by a robot to get to the meeting.

Sorry for the lack of similey emoticons. I never got into that habit.
But I assure you, that I'm just having fun! :-)

Part of the fun, is to use statistics to predict human behavior. 
Sociological studies are very often deeply rooted in predictive
statistics. (do I need another one of thoes emoticons now?)

<:-)>
It is true that using only a single factor of driving distance and
relative worth would provide a flat model. Another potential factor
would be a "annoyance" of the drive. This is essentually the average mph
for the trip. For example, lets say that for both location "A" and "B"
it takes me 30 minutes to drive. Both sites would have identical
relative worths, but if the distance to location "A" is 5 miles (10mph)
and location to "B" is 20 miles (40mph), the preferred location would
be the site 20 miles away! I hate creeping along at 10mph.
</:-)>

>
>Whether or not "SPUG-lurker A" will attend a meeting at "Location B"
>might be influenced to some degree by driving distance, driving time,
>ratio of driving-time to meeting duration, what shows are on the car
>radio at the time he/she has to start the drive, whether the optimal
>route would be convenient for a stop at Burger Queen along the way, and
>what adult beverages are available at the post-meeting hangout, but our
>goal here is not to develop a theory for predicting meeting attendance.

He he ! Ok... Right. Without doing any analysis, my preference would be
either of the Eastside sites ('cause they are close), or the Speakeasy
('cause it's cool). 

>
>Current List of Meeting-Place Choices:
>
>West:
>	Fred's Cancer Center
>		(for $100/night - a big problem)
>	SpeakEasy, Downtown Seattle
>		(although some have doubts about basic suitability,
>		cheaper than Fred's, and with better drinks)
>East:
>	Lucent, in Redmond (520 and Redmond Way)
>		fancy conference room, reportedly
>	Maxim Group, Bellevue (520 and ?; near Bellevue Way, I think)
>		only basic conference room?  still awaiting details . . .
>North:
>	A Chicken-Coop in Woodinville 
>		deluxe ($50/night - a problem)
>	ATL-Philips Ultrasound(Advanced Technology Labs)
>		522 and I405 in Bothell
>
        _,'|            _.-''``-...___..--';
       /, \'.      _..-' ,      ,--...--'''
      < \   .`--'''      `     /| William Julien moonbeam at catmanor.com
       `-,;'              ;   ; ; http://www.catmanor.com/moonbeam/
 __...--''     __...--_..'  .;.'  vi is my shepherd; i shall not font.
(,__....----'''      (,..--''     
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5,(41*2),sqrt(7056),(unpack(c,H)-2),oct(115),10);'


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