An article in New Scientist magazine by Kate Ravilious, Locating, Locating, Locating, explores the use of a mathematical model called Levy flights to better understand evolutionary migration, hereditary disease, and retail store locations. Essentially, Levy flights are small clusters of localized movements--short steps--interspersed with long leaps to new locations and another cluster of movement.
Apparently our seemingly random behavior when searching for lost keys, or shopping, is not unlike the methods perfected by our hunter-gatherer forebearers.
Architect-planners at University College London are using Levy flights to improve town planning. One graduate student applied the model to study "IKEA Rage." Farah Kazim studied the way people move around IKEA and found that "our forward-facing vision is the key to why we follow the windy route through the showroom." There are shorter ways out, but they are always behind you.
Maybe our constant forward-facing vision is sending us the long way round, and the simpler route to accomplishing our mission is behind us.
