Why you struggle to find cheap flights | Barry Burd | TEDxDrewUniversity
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Published 2024-07-29
Each travel site claims that its software finds the best prices. But how reasonable is that claim? Is flight shopping merely confusing, or is there something inherently challenging about the airfare optimization problem?
Researcher Carl de Marcken studied this question and came to some surprising conclusions. De Marcken showed that a simple version of the optimization problem is what specialists call NP-hard or intractable. The scale of the problem grows too quickly for any hardware to keep up. So, solving the problem with our best systems isn't feasible. De Marcken went further and proved that solving the fully-formed flight optimization problem is theoretically unsolvable. No matter how much computing power is available, you can't find the best flight from home to Atlanta. Booking a flight isn't merely a big problem -- It's an impossible problem. Barry Burd is a professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Drew University. Throughout his five decades teaching undergraduate students, he's been striving to pique students' curiosity and make learning enjoyable. His scholarly papers cover various aspects of infinity in mathematics, including games with infinitely many rounds of play (which seems, on the surface, to be ridiculous) and computations that succeed after infinitely many steps (which seems even more ridiculous). Dr. Burd has spoken at conferences in the United States, Europe, Australia, and Asia. He's authored 12 books, which have been translated into 11 languages. When anyone asks him about the possibility of retirement, his response is, "Why?" This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx
All Comments (17)
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To get better price, use VPN so the airline doesn't know who you are or what your budget is.
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fun fact, skiplagging may not be illigal but it can get you banned from an airline
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Thank you for this beautiful message that so many of us - all of us - need to hear!! š
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Is it because they got rid of AirShips? Those things seemed really cool if you've seen the Documentary The Old World Order.
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Raise who all are here for their english speaking skill I am also
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TedX really should curate their content better. Thatās 15 minutes of my life Iāll never get back. :-/
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Heās very methodical with his approach
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god i hate how we let anyone give talks now.
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The aim of pricing isn't to make the least revenue..
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I thought I'll get the best price every time š¤ Not the expected conclusion š¢
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What is the best way to make money from crypto trading?
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It's not a mystery, it's history and
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Google i dont want to find flights thanks
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Buddy has never heard of Linux
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Currently taking flight šFF š!
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Big Bird does airline tickets monologueā¦Leonard Cohen was the voice coach.
