Comment Re:Mathematician? (Score 4, Insightful) 203
Isn't making the elevator go faster a job for an engineer? Does one really need to be a mathematician to know that a faster elevator moves people faster?
I suspect that the problem here is a failure on the part of the article writer. The author was probably just looking for any sort of answer to 'What's the most famous building you've ever done any work for?', rather than 'what's the most mathematically-interesting part of your job?'
It's also possible that there's a little bit of complexity being glossed over here. For the Empire State Building, visitors take up to three consecutive elevator rides to get to the observation decks: one to get up to the 80th floor, another from 80 to 86 and the main observation deck (though the hearty can take the stairs), and an optional, extra-charge trip from 86 up to the topmost observation area on 102. Visitors form queues for tickets, security, and each elevator ride (both up and down).
While speeding up any of the elevators might seem like a good thing, it runs the risk of causing crowding and bunching of passengers waiting for the now-overloaded next stage. Making one set of elevators faster could increase wear and tear on those elevators (and increase both energy use and passenger discomfort) without improving overall throughput; I can see how there might be some serious mathematical optimization going on there. As well, it's possible that our mathematician was involved in optimizing all of the building's elevator speeds and timings, and not just the elevators dedicated to observation deck service: a much more difficult optimization problem.