Recently, I attended a family get-together at Geneva-on-the-Lake, Ohio. It’s an old-fashioned resort town on Lake Erie, and one of the many attractions is the annual Monster Bar Crawl. You buy a drink at each participating bar, have the bar crawl card stamped, and receive a t-shirt after collecting all of the stamps. It’s a fun way to see a huge variety of places; Geneva-on-the-Lake is popular with bikers, and there are several wineries in the area.
We decided that every adult in the group would get a shirt, including two who could not drink alcohol for various reasons. (The two non-drinkers did get a few stamps for buying pop, which is allowed on the Monster Crawl.)
Because of different arrival and departure times, the stamps accumulated at different rates. On Saturday afternoon, I sat down with the group’s remaining cards to determine the most effective way to get shirts that evening for the five people who still needed them. This was a linear programming problem!
Linear programming, for those who don’t know, is a branch of algebra that looks to find the optimal solution given a set of constraints. I had to take it in business school, but very few people learn it anymore because computer programs that do it are a dime a dozen; it’s not a foundation skill the way that basic multiplication is. It was an old-fashioned subject when I took it, dropped from the curriculum shortly thereafter in favor of more modern approaches to management decisionmaking.
In this case, we had two constraints: the number of people left who were able to make the rounds of bars, and the amount of alcohol they could reasonably consume. I had it all figured out: We’d walk up to Mike’s Bermuda Triangle. Four people would order drinks. Then, two people would take cards over to Survivor’s (waiting until one of the cards had a stamp from the Bermuda Triangle). The three remaining would walk past Lakefront and pick up one stamp there (no liquor license – pop only), then go to the Sandy Chanty to get three stamps there. We’d reconnoiter, then split the cards and the group between The Swiss Chalet and Sportsterz. No one would have more than three drinks, and all the cards would be filled up.
Did my family appreciate the expertise acquired from a fancy education? No, they did not. We got the shirts by ordering lots of light beer. And at least one little brother was laughing at my analysis.
I feel your pain. I once tried to organize a reverse auction (dutch auction) during a fantasy baseball league draft. It did not go over well.
My son took linear algebra last semester and says it was the hardest math class he’s ever taken (and he’s pretty smart). Good for you!
Michelle
I loved the logic of it, but I also knew that I would never actually do it in the real world – except maybe to try to plan a bar crawl!
Wow. I think you and my husband would have some kinda fun solving problems!!
Me? I’m in it for the t-shirt.