Cache Cab: Taxi Drivers' Brains Grow to Navigate London's Streets

Thursday, December 8, 2011 - 13:00 in Mathematics & Economics

Manhattan's midtown streets are arranged in a user-friendly grid. In Paris 20 administrative districts, or arrondissements, form a clockwise spiral around the Seine. But London? A map of its streets looks more like a tangle of yarn that a preschooler glued to construction paper than a metropolis designed with architectural foresight. Yet London's taxi drivers navigate the smoggy snarl with ease, instantaneously calculating the swiftest route between any two points. [More]

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