In a research paper published to arXiv, Daniele Quercia from Yahoo Labs explains how a new algorithm could optimize directions for beauty. "The goal of this work is to automatically suggest routes that are not only short but also emotionally pleasant," she writes.
So, how does it work? Well, first Quercia and her team created a database of images, taken from Google Street View and Geograph, of the center of London. Then, they crowdsourced opinions about how pleasant the parts of town were relative to each other via UrbanGems.org: users see two images and have to choose which one is nicest. It's Hot or Not for cities.
Armed with that data, the team plotted heat maps, showing how the beauty of London varied with geographic location. From there, it was fairly straightforward to create an algorithm that found the most attractive route rather than the fastest: it searches through the possible routes typically suggested, but adds attractiveness along each one and then chooses the one with the highest score.
The results tend to be about 12 percent longer than the shortest route. In a slightly-less-than-scientific test, Quercia had 30 Londoners follow her suggested paths, and they agreed that the routes were indeed more attractive than the shortest.
by Jamie Condliffe, Gizmodo | Read more:
Image: uncredited
