Of stacks and suitcases

As promised in the previous post, here is the interesting incident that took place as a result of sitting in the front of the plane near the window, and having way too much boredom to deal with.

In stark contrast to the previous flight from Mumbai to Newark, I was seated as far ahead as possible without being in first class - row 5 (rows 1 to 4 are in first). Sitting on the right window seat of row 5 gives you an excellent view of the suitcases being loaded - there's a conveyor belt heading into the plane and people in orange jackets tossing bags onto it. Bear in mind that this probably depends on the model of the aircraft, but this was a relatively small domestic flight, so you had a small plane with two aisles. A huge advantage in sitting right after first class is that they have a partition between first and the rest of the plane, and so the people in economy seated right after the partition have more legroom than anyone on the plane, including the blokes in first class!

Now they had been loading up the cargo since before I got to my seat, but once I was there I started watching them to see if I could spot my suitcase, which is easily recognizable owing to the big fat red ribbon tied to its handle, to...er, make it easy to recognize. I did take along another tiny little suitcase as well, but that was pretty nondescript, which ironically made it easier to spot. This just goes to show that in the presence of large amounts of novelty, simple plainness actually stands out, thus rendering the nondescript somewhat conspicuous. And the fact that I write this demonstrates that I love silly little contradictions like this, contrived though they may be.

In any event, I was unable to spot either of the suitcases, which led to me to figure that one of the following had occurred: (a) They had missed my suitcase, or (b) They had loaded it before I got there to watch them. Given that (a) is usually rare, I figured (b) was more likely. Being a well-trained logically minded sort of chap, I also considered the possibilities that there were other loading points out of my sight, either further back or on the other side of the aircraft. However, after watching these guys for a bit, I figured that there were no such additional points, either (a) because of the annoyance of having to assign multiple teams to one plane, or make the same team switch places all the time, or (b) it would have been a pointless thing to do, and so probably be bad design.

At this point, being a big fan of meta-thinking, I also realized that (a) I seem to be considering a lot of alternatives in the form of alphabetically indexed lists, and (b) This is getting out of hand I should stop at once.

Anyway, being a nutty computer scientist, I observed that the behavior of the suitcase loading system was analogous to a stack - last in, first out, because they would have to bring them out in reverse order on the same conveyor belt, as far as I could see. Consequently, based on my hypothesis that my suitcase had been loaded at the beginning, I concluded that I'd have to wait pretty long for it to come out on the carousel.

What? I do programming contests - I have to notice little things like this. Sort of like how Chuck Norris always has to solve his problems using roundhouse kicks, as we all know he does.

So there I was, armed with a hypothesis and a testable prediction, and all I had to do was wait patiently, doze through the flight and watch an episode of the Simpsons, and then get off and experiment, i.e., wait again.

Sure enough, I was virtually the last person out of baggage claim, and so I received the perfect ending to a nice holiday, in the form of a successful application of the scientific method, the joy of discovery and all that...

Okay, perhaps that is a bit too geeky, even for me.