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MIT's Elegant Schoolbus Algorithm Was No Match For Angry Parents (bostonglobe.com)
"Computers can solve your problem. You may not like the answer," writes the Boston Globe. Slashdot reader sandbagger explains:
"Boston Public Schools asked MIT graduate students Sebastien Martin and Arthur Delarue to build an algorithm that could do the enormously complicated work of changing start times at dozens of schools -- and re-routing the hundreds of buses that serve them. In theory this would also help with student alertness...." MIT also reported that "Approximately 50 superfluous routes could be eliminated using the new method, saving the school district between $3 million and $5 million annually."
The Globe reports: They took to the new project with gusto, working 14- and 15-hour days to meet a tight deadline -- and occasionally waking up in the middle of the night to feed new information to a sprawling MIT data center. The machine they constructed was a marvel. Sorting through 1 novemtrigintillion options -- that's 1 followed by 120 zeroes -- the algorithm landed on a plan that would trim the district's $100 million-plus transportation budget while shifting the overwhelming majority of high school students into later start times.... But no one anticipated the crush of opposition that followed. Angry parents signed an online petition and filled the school committee chamber, turning the plan into one of the biggest crises of Mayor Marty Walsh's tenure. The city summarily dropped it. The failure would eventually play a role in the superintendent's resignation...
Big districts stagger their start times so a single fleet of buses can serve every school: dropping off high school students early in the morning, then circling back to get the elementary and middle school kids. If you're going to push high school start times back, then you've probably got to move a lot of elementary and middle schools into earlier time slots. The district knew that going in, and officials dutifully quizzed thousands of parents and teachers at every grade level about their preferred start times. But they never directly confronted constituents with the sort of dramatic change the algorithm would eventually propose -- shifting school start times at some elementary schools by as much as two hours. Even more... Hundreds of families were facing a 9:30 to 7:15 a.m. shift. And for many, that was intolerable. They'd have to make major changes to work schedules or even quit their jobs...
Nearly 85% of the district had ended up with a new start time, and "In the end, the school start time quandary was more political than technical... This was a fundamentally human conflict, and all the computing power in the world couldn't solve it."
But will the whole drama play out again? "Last year, even after everything went sideways in Boston, some 80 school districts from around the country reached out to the whiz kids from MIT, eager for the algorithm to solve their problems."
The Globe reports: They took to the new project with gusto, working 14- and 15-hour days to meet a tight deadline -- and occasionally waking up in the middle of the night to feed new information to a sprawling MIT data center. The machine they constructed was a marvel. Sorting through 1 novemtrigintillion options -- that's 1 followed by 120 zeroes -- the algorithm landed on a plan that would trim the district's $100 million-plus transportation budget while shifting the overwhelming majority of high school students into later start times.... But no one anticipated the crush of opposition that followed. Angry parents signed an online petition and filled the school committee chamber, turning the plan into one of the biggest crises of Mayor Marty Walsh's tenure. The city summarily dropped it. The failure would eventually play a role in the superintendent's resignation...
Big districts stagger their start times so a single fleet of buses can serve every school: dropping off high school students early in the morning, then circling back to get the elementary and middle school kids. If you're going to push high school start times back, then you've probably got to move a lot of elementary and middle schools into earlier time slots. The district knew that going in, and officials dutifully quizzed thousands of parents and teachers at every grade level about their preferred start times. But they never directly confronted constituents with the sort of dramatic change the algorithm would eventually propose -- shifting school start times at some elementary schools by as much as two hours. Even more... Hundreds of families were facing a 9:30 to 7:15 a.m. shift. And for many, that was intolerable. They'd have to make major changes to work schedules or even quit their jobs...
Nearly 85% of the district had ended up with a new start time, and "In the end, the school start time quandary was more political than technical... This was a fundamentally human conflict, and all the computing power in the world couldn't solve it."
But will the whole drama play out again? "Last year, even after everything went sideways in Boston, some 80 school districts from around the country reached out to the whiz kids from MIT, eager for the algorithm to solve their problems."
What about providing optimal bus routes without changing start times? Or what about factoring in a cost for changing start times to only do so when the new start time makes a huge difference in the bussing cost? They just need to take into account the political cost of moving start times as another set of parameters.
Civilized people are dead at 7:15 AM. What kind of an asshole would demand that you get a kid to school so early?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Programming would be so much easier without the damn user!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Too-early start times, especially for high schools, are a well known reason for poor academic performance:
http://time.com/4741147/school...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/s...
Wonder what the public key field is for?
Nearly 85% of the district had ended up with a new start time, and "In the end, the school start time quandary was more political than technical... This was a fundamentally human conflict, and all the computing power in the world couldn't solve it."
No, it wasn't 'political'. The algorithm successfully computed an optimal schedule for the students with regards to bus transport, but did not include any data at all about the optimal schedule for the parents.
If they wanted to find the optimums, they should have included the whole system and not just the least impactful part. The parents schedules are the most important ones since they are responsible for making it all happen; from breakfast to dinner to bedtime.
I see this all the time. Brilliant programmers and mathematicians that think they can just throw the data into an algorithm and get an answer without understanding the data itself or how to interpret it medically/biologically.
...if I had a mere dollar for every project that failed because they failed to identify the primary customer and understand their needs.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Is that problems like this didn't happen when only one parent had to work to support a family. The 'homemaker' stayed home and handled things like weird school times, plus you know, actually teaching their own kids about life. Now both parents have to work, isn't it nice that now it takes two people working full time jobs to earn enough that used to be done by ONE full time parent? This tells me that your job is only worth half the value it used to be! Progress for corporations, at the expense of your family, indeed.
Traffic is no more dangerous than 30-40 years ago, in fact, it's safer. I don't think a larger % of the population has a proclivity to kidnap and abuse children than before, either.
You sound like part of the problem. In normal places like NYC or parts of Europe, kids walk, bike, or take public transit to school, and parents aren't quaking in their boots in fear.
Home schooling works superbly in the best case.
In the worst case, it's a disaster. Parents don't care, kid watches TV for a year, learns nothing and loses much of what was previously learned. You'd be surprised to find out just what portion of parents are that bad, probably close to one quarter.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
"It's just want I asked for, but not what I want!"
We don't really have those problems here.
In first world countries, it is assumed that people work for a living and that the average work day spans from around 7am to 5pm with a little time for drifting. As such, in first world countries we have government subsidized day care that operates from 7am to 5pm. This means that everyone should be able to make their work window happen during those hours.
For children who are too young to be home alone before and after school, the schools are open early and there are people watching the playgrounds. Then there are programs sponsored by the government to provide after school activities (similar to day care) for kids up to around 6th grade until 5pm.
In these environments, we don't have school buses... we simply have public transportation. The parents drop off and pick up using public buses... even if you live on a farm 500km from civilization... there should be a regularly serviced bus stop nearby.
Parents often make groups to walk kids to and from school each day... and the single parent with a long way to go to get to and from work generally don't have problems because no one would consider making one of their child's friends mother have to quit their job.
Then there's the issue of making sure that mom or dad don't have that problem. Whether you're a 1%er or you're the bottom 1%, the government pays your child welfare to make sure their have what they need. This pops an extra $300-$500 a month into your bank account. So you can afford to have a slightly more flexible job or even to be a student long enough to make things easier later on.
We pay for this as tax payers in the first world and don't think anything of it. It doesn't matter whether we choose to have children of our own or not. What matters is that the people we work with need to be healthy. The people who work for us need to be healthy. The people who pick up the trash on the road need to be healthy. The people who we pass on the street need to be healthy. Otherwise, you get second world problems like school shootings because people aren't healthy. Or equally disgusting... people live in neighborhoods with security gates and guards because they're terrified of their own lives.
The first world is willing to live with a little less to get a lot more. We have governments with parties who we don't trust, but are smart enough to make sure there are enough parties that they can't make any choices without actually debating those laws openly. So while we don't trust the people in the government... we trust their enmity towards one another to keep them from hurting us. We also trust the government to make sure our tax payer money is spent in a way that will get them reelected because we can see, touch and feel how much better our lives are than the second world Americans on TV.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There is a fallacy of averages in play here.
We try to provide an education for all students, and there are federal laws protecting that right to an education. But some students cost more to educate than others. Special needs students are very expensive to educate. Most charter and voucher schools find ways to get out of taking their fair share of special needs students, and few parents will have the resources to home school them.
But voucher systems typically pay the district-wide average of student cost, rather than the average cost of educating a non-special-needs student. As a result, they overpay for what the schools are delivering. Students who are less costly to educate leave the public school system, leaving that system with a higher percentage of those expensive students while simultaneously damaging its economies of scale. The result is a downward spiral of public education.