The Roots of the Equation

Today I met a friend for lunch, and we decided to meet halfway between our apartments. To think about where that would be, I used MeetWays, which was useful because it can find that mid-point based on a variety of modes of transportation: car, bike, public transit, and walking.

The thing is, my friend took the train to lunch and I walked. (I based the location on the transit midpoint, but decided to walk for the exercise.) So what counts at the midpoint then? If one person drives and another doesn’t, do you include the time spent finding parking as part of your calculation? Is it based on time, or distance? If we both travel for 45 minutes, but she’s much farther from home, is that still meeting in the middle? Considering everywhere I could walk within 45 minutes and everywhere she could train in that time, is there really only one middle point, or do those rings intersect twice?

There are the things I wondered as I walked. Are there other good questions to ask? You can probably, at the least, get a decent rates question out of it.