早稲田政経 2014 I
You press a button and wait for your elevator. How long before you get impatient and agitated? Theresa Christy says 20 seconds.
As a mathematician steeped in the theories of vertical transportation at Otis Elevator Co., Ms. Christy, 55, has spent a quarter-century developing systems that make elevators run as perfectly us possible―which means getting the most riders possible into a car in less than 20 seconds. "Traditionally, the wait time is the most important factor," she says. "The thing people hate the most is waiting."
Developed in the 19th century, elevators transformed urban living, real-estate markets, and skylines around the world. As an Otis research fellow, Ms. Christy ( A ) and on prestigious projects like the 1,483-foot-high Petronas Towers, in Malaysia, for a time the world's tallest buildings.
During the recent $550 million upgrade of the Empire State Building, in New York City, Ms. Christy was asked whether she could help get more people up to the observation deck. She said she couldn't get more people into o car but could ( B ). So she increased the elevators' speed by 20 percent, to 20 feet per second, Now the cars can rise 80 floors in about 48 seconds, 10 seconds faster than before.
Rather than having riders wait for the first available car, Otis Elevator's Compass system has riders input the floor they want by keypad or touch screen. They are then told which car to take. The result: a more orderly lobby and a faster ride.
The challenges Ms. Christy deals with depend on the place. At a hotel in the holy city of Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, she has to make sure that the elevators can clear a building quickly enough to get people out five times a day for prayer.
In Japan, riders immediately want to know which car will serve them ― indicated by a light and a pinging sound ― even if the elevator won't arrive for 30 seconds. That way, people can line up in front of the correct elevator.
Japan also boasts, in Ms. Christy's opinion, the smoothest, best-riding elevators. "When you get into an elevator there, you sometimes think you are stuck in the elevator because the motion is so smooth and quiet," she says. But that service ( C ) extra costs and slower speeds.
Another problem: How many people fit in an elevator? In Asia, more people will board a car than in Europe or New York, Ms. Christy says; Westerners prefer more personal space. When she programs an elevator system, she uses different weights for the average person by region. The average American is 22 pounds heavier than the average Chinese.
At their core, elevators are a mode of transportation. Serving passengers well is constrained by the number of elevators, their speed, how fast their doors open and close, and how many people can fit in a car. In the U.S., these factors come together 18 billion times a year, each time a passenger rides an elevator.
That experience is at the heart of what Ms. Christy does. From her sparse second-floor office in a leafy office park in Farmington, in Connecticut, she writes strings of code that allow elevators to do essentially ( D ) ―including the building's owner, who has to allocate considerable space for the concrete shafts that house the cars. Her work often involves watching computer programs that simulate elevator decision-making.
"I feel like I get paid to play videogames. I watch the simulation, and I see what happens, and I try to improve the score I am getting,' she says.
Here is a typical problem: ( E )
For Ms. Christy, these are mathematical problems with no one optimum solution. In the real world, there are so many parameters and combinations that everything changes as soon as the next rider presses a button. In a tall building with six elevators and 10 people trying to move between floors, there are millions of possible combinations―too many, she says, for the elevator's computer to process in split seconds.
"We are constantly seeking the magic balance," says Ms. Christy. "Sometimes what is good for the individual person isn't good for the rest."
A named inventor on 14 patents, Ms. Christy has a few more awaiting approval. She refers to the latest of them as the "surfboard feature." The idea came from a joke with colleagues when they were leaving one night after a dinner out. They half-seriously worried whether someday elevators might display a rider's weight. (Elevators already calculate the total weight in the car.)
The joke got Ms. Christy thinking of a feature that would allow people with a bulky or heavy item to have a car to themselves. So she and her colleagues created a system that can be programmed to allocate an empty car to a single user. The feature would give users like hotel staff a numeric code that is punched in before entering the elevator. (A hotel in Hawaii considered using it to prevent surfers from disturbing other guests with their surfboards―hence its name.) The feature is now in general use in hotels and office buildings.
As a mathematician steeped in the theories of vertical transportation at Otis Elevator Co., Ms. Christy, 55, has spent a quarter-century developing systems that make elevators run as perfectly us possible―which means getting the most riders possible into a car in less than 20 seconds. "Traditionally, the wait time is the most important factor," she says. "The thing people hate the most is waiting."
Developed in the 19th century, elevators transformed urban living, real-estate markets, and skylines around the world. As an Otis research fellow, Ms. Christy ( A ) and on prestigious projects like the 1,483-foot-high Petronas Towers, in Malaysia, for a time the world's tallest buildings.
During the recent $550 million upgrade of the Empire State Building, in New York City, Ms. Christy was asked whether she could help get more people up to the observation deck. She said she couldn't get more people into o car but could ( B ). So she increased the elevators' speed by 20 percent, to 20 feet per second, Now the cars can rise 80 floors in about 48 seconds, 10 seconds faster than before.
Rather than having riders wait for the first available car, Otis Elevator's Compass system has riders input the floor they want by keypad or touch screen. They are then told which car to take. The result: a more orderly lobby and a faster ride.
The challenges Ms. Christy deals with depend on the place. At a hotel in the holy city of Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, she has to make sure that the elevators can clear a building quickly enough to get people out five times a day for prayer.
In Japan, riders immediately want to know which car will serve them ― indicated by a light and a pinging sound ― even if the elevator won't arrive for 30 seconds. That way, people can line up in front of the correct elevator.
Japan also boasts, in Ms. Christy's opinion, the smoothest, best-riding elevators. "When you get into an elevator there, you sometimes think you are stuck in the elevator because the motion is so smooth and quiet," she says. But that service ( C ) extra costs and slower speeds.
Another problem: How many people fit in an elevator? In Asia, more people will board a car than in Europe or New York, Ms. Christy says; Westerners prefer more personal space. When she programs an elevator system, she uses different weights for the average person by region. The average American is 22 pounds heavier than the average Chinese.
At their core, elevators are a mode of transportation. Serving passengers well is constrained by the number of elevators, their speed, how fast their doors open and close, and how many people can fit in a car. In the U.S., these factors come together 18 billion times a year, each time a passenger rides an elevator.
That experience is at the heart of what Ms. Christy does. From her sparse second-floor office in a leafy office park in Farmington, in Connecticut, she writes strings of code that allow elevators to do essentially ( D ) ―including the building's owner, who has to allocate considerable space for the concrete shafts that house the cars. Her work often involves watching computer programs that simulate elevator decision-making.
"I feel like I get paid to play videogames. I watch the simulation, and I see what happens, and I try to improve the score I am getting,' she says.
Here is a typical problem: ( E )
For Ms. Christy, these are mathematical problems with no one optimum solution. In the real world, there are so many parameters and combinations that everything changes as soon as the next rider presses a button. In a tall building with six elevators and 10 people trying to move between floors, there are millions of possible combinations―too many, she says, for the elevator's computer to process in split seconds.
"We are constantly seeking the magic balance," says Ms. Christy. "Sometimes what is good for the individual person isn't good for the rest."
A named inventor on 14 patents, Ms. Christy has a few more awaiting approval. She refers to the latest of them as the "surfboard feature." The idea came from a joke with colleagues when they were leaving one night after a dinner out. They half-seriously worried whether someday elevators might display a rider's weight. (Elevators already calculate the total weight in the car.)
The joke got Ms. Christy thinking of a feature that would allow people with a bulky or heavy item to have a car to themselves. So she and her colleagues created a system that can be programmed to allocate an empty car to a single user. The feature would give users like hotel staff a numeric code that is punched in before entering the elevator. (A hotel in Hawaii considered using it to prevent surfers from disturbing other guests with their surfboards―hence its name.) The feature is now in general use in hotels and office buildings.
1 Use the seven words below to fill in blank space (A) in the best way. Indicate your choices for the second, fourth, and sixth positions.
(a) guts (b) on (c) problems (d) the (e) to (f) toughest (g) work
2 Choose the most suitable answer from those below to fill in blank space (B).
(a) add to the number of cars
(b) ask them to walk more quickly
(c) design a more spacious car
(d) move them up more quickly
(e) reduce the speed of each car
3 Choose the most suitable answer from those below to fill in blank space (C).
(a) comes with
(b) focuses on
(c) looks to
(d) pays for
(e) takes off
4 Choose the most suitable answer from those below to fill in blank space (D).
(a) the best work for the largest machines
(b) the fastest rise for the lightest passengers
(c) the greatest good for the moist people
(d) the heaviest load for the cheapest price
(e) the quickest speed for the least effort
5 Choose the most suitable order of sentences from those below to fill in blank space (E).
(a) A passenger on the sixth floor wants to descend.
(b) Is it the right choice to make that car stop again?
(c) That would be the best result for the sixth-floor passenger, but it would make the other people's rides longer.
(d) The closest car is on the seventh floor, but it already has three riders and has made two stops.
6 Choose the most suitable answer from those below to complete the following sentence.
The "surfboard feature" is designed to
(a) allow hotel clerks to assign codes to keep track of belongings such as surfboards.
(b) enable passengers to use an elevator for themselves when carrying bulky items.
(c) identify hotels, like some in Hawaii, where surfers are offered larger rooms.
(d) provide recreational opportunities to employees interested in surfing.
(e) show the weight of individual passengers as they step into an elevator.
7 Choose the most suitable answer from those below to complete the following sentence
The writer notes that as far as Ms. Christy is concerned,
(a) differences between cities like Mecca and New York have no effect on the design of elevator systems.
(b) it is impossible to come up with a perfect solution when designing an elevator system.
(c) Japan's elevators arc best known for holding a large number of people.
(d) there are some interesting similarities between designing elevator systems and goods used in sports like surfing.
(e) when upgrading the Empire State Building, her principal task was to get more people into the elevator.
印刷用
解答は全訳の下。
(a) guts (b) on (c) problems (d) the (e) to (f) toughest (g) work
2 Choose the most suitable answer from those below to fill in blank space (B).
(a) add to the number of cars
(b) ask them to walk more quickly
(c) design a more spacious car
(d) move them up more quickly
(e) reduce the speed of each car
3 Choose the most suitable answer from those below to fill in blank space (C).
(a) comes with
(b) focuses on
(c) looks to
(d) pays for
(e) takes off
4 Choose the most suitable answer from those below to fill in blank space (D).
(a) the best work for the largest machines
(b) the fastest rise for the lightest passengers
(c) the greatest good for the moist people
(d) the heaviest load for the cheapest price
(e) the quickest speed for the least effort
5 Choose the most suitable order of sentences from those below to fill in blank space (E).
(a) A passenger on the sixth floor wants to descend.
(b) Is it the right choice to make that car stop again?
(c) That would be the best result for the sixth-floor passenger, but it would make the other people's rides longer.
(d) The closest car is on the seventh floor, but it already has three riders and has made two stops.
6 Choose the most suitable answer from those below to complete the following sentence.
The "surfboard feature" is designed to
(a) allow hotel clerks to assign codes to keep track of belongings such as surfboards.
(b) enable passengers to use an elevator for themselves when carrying bulky items.
(c) identify hotels, like some in Hawaii, where surfers are offered larger rooms.
(d) provide recreational opportunities to employees interested in surfing.
(e) show the weight of individual passengers as they step into an elevator.
7 Choose the most suitable answer from those below to complete the following sentence
The writer notes that as far as Ms. Christy is concerned,
(a) differences between cities like Mecca and New York have no effect on the design of elevator systems.
(b) it is impossible to come up with a perfect solution when designing an elevator system.
(c) Japan's elevators arc best known for holding a large number of people.
(d) there are some interesting similarities between designing elevator systems and goods used in sports like surfing.
(e) when upgrading the Empire State Building, her principal task was to get more people into the elevator.
印刷用
解答は全訳の下。
ボタンを押して，エレベーターを待つとする。あなたはどのくらいでイライラして落ち着かなくなるだろう？ テレサ＝クリスティによると20秒だ。
55歳のクリスティ氏は，オーティス・エレベータ社で垂直交通理論に没頭する数学者として，四半世紀にわたってエレベーターを可能な限り完璧に稼働させるシステムを開発してきた一つまり，なるべく多くの乗客が20秒以内にかごに乗れるようにするのである。「伝統的に待ち時間は最も重要な要素です」と彼女は言う。「人々が一番嫌がるのは待つことなのです」
エレベーターは19世紀に開発され，都市生活，不動産市場，世界中のスカイラインを変えた。クリスティ氏は，オーティス社のリサーチフェローとして，最も困難な問題だけでなく，しばらくは世界で最も高いビルであったマレーシアの高さ1,483フィートのぺトロナスタワーのような名高いプロジェクトも手掛けている。
最近ではニューヨーク市のエンパイア・ステート・ビルディングの５億５千万ドルをかけた改修工事中に クリスティ氏はより多くの人を展望台まで行かせることに力を貸せるかどうかを尋ねられた。彼女は，かごに乗せる人数は増やせないが，彼らをもっと速く上昇させることならできると答えた。そこで彼女はエレベーターの速度を20パーセント上げて，秒速20フィートにした。現在，かごは80階を，以前より10秒速い約48秒で上昇することができる。
オーティス・エレベータ社のコンパス・システムでは，乗客に最初に利用できるかごを待たせるのではなく，キーパッドやタッチパネルを使って自分が行きたい階を入力させる。すると乗客はどのかごに乗ればよいかがわかる。結果として，ロビーがより整然として，素早く乗れるのだ。
クリスティ氏が扱う難問は場所に左右される。サウジアラビアの聖地メッカにあるホテルだと，人々が１日に５回，お祈りのために外に出られるよう，エレベーターは，速やかに建物をからっぽにできるようになっていなければならないのだ。
日本だと，乗客はたとえエレベーターが30秒間来なくても，自分はどのかごに乗るのかよいかが－ライトとピンポンという音で表示されて一即座にわかることを望む。そうすることで人々は正しいエレベーターの前に並ぶことができるのだ。
クリスティ氏の意見では，日本では最もスムーズで乗り心地のいいエレベーターも自慢だ。「日本でエレベーターに乗ると，あまりに動きがなめらかで静かなので，エレベーターが動かなくなったように思うこともありますよ」と彼女は言う。しかしそのサービスだと余分な費用がかかり，スピードも遅くなってしまう。
また別の問題もある。エレベーターに何人乗れるかだ。アジアではヨーロッパやニューヨークより多くの人がかごに乗るだろうと，クリスティ氏は言う。西洋人の方が個人的なスペースがある方を好むと思うからだ。彼女がエレベーターのシステムをプログラムする際には，平均的な人の体重は地域によって違うものを使う。平均的アメリカ人は、平均的中国人より22ポンド重い。
エレベーターの核心部分にあるのは，それが移動手段だという点である。乗客によいサービスを提供するにも，エレベーターの数，そのスピード，どれくらいの速さでドアが開閉するか，かごに何人乗れるかといった点に制約を受ける。米国では，一年に180億回，乗客がエレベーターに乗るたびにこれらの要因が同時に生じるのだ。
その経験がクリスティ氏の仕事の中心にある。コネチカット州ファーミントンの緑多きオフィス街の一角にある２階の手狭なオフィスから，彼女は，エレベーターが基本的にはｰかごを収納するコンクリート製のシャフトにかなりのスペースを割かなければならないビルのオーナーも含めて一最大数の大たちに最善のことができるようにするコードを次々に書き上げる。彼女が仕事中にエレベーターの意思決定をシミュレーションするコンピュー
夕・プログラムを眺めていることも多い。
「コンピュータ・ゲームをして給料をもらっている気がするんですよ。シミュレーションを眺めると，何か起こるかがわかり，これから自分が得る得点を上げようとするわけです」と彼女は言う。
次に挙げるのは典型的な問題である。６階にいる乗客が下に行きたいとする。一番近くのかごは７階にいるが，すでに３人が乗っていて，２つの階に止まったあとだ。そのかごを再び停止させるのは適切な選択だろうか。それは６階にいる乗客にとっては最善の結果だろうが，あとの乗客にすれば乗っている時間がさらに長くなることになるだろう。
クリスティ氏にすれば，こういうのは最善の解決策など１つとしてない数学的問題である。現実の世界では，多くの制限要因や組み合わせがあるので，あらゆることが次の乗客がボタンを押したとたん変化してしまう。６つのエレベーターがある高層ビルで10人が階を行き来しようとする場合，可能な組み合わせは何百万通りもあり，数が多すぎて，エレベーターのコンピュータが瞬時に処理することなどできない，と彼女は言う。
「私たちは絶えず絶妙なバランスを見つけ出そうとしているのです」とクリスティ氏は言う。「時にはある一人にとって都合のいいことが，あとの人たちにはよくないこともありますからね」
14件の特許に名前のついた発明家でもあるクリスティ氏には，承認待ちのものもいくつかある。彼女はその特許の一番最近のを「サーフボード機能」と呼んでいる。そのアイデアは，ある晩，外で食事をしたあと帰ろうとしていたときに同僚と交わした冗談から生まれた,囗司僚はなかば本気で，いつかエレベーターに乗っている人の体重が表示されるようになるのではないかと心配したのだ（エレベーターはかごに乗っている人の総重量ならすでに計算している）。
その冗談からクリスティ氏は，かさばったり，重い荷物を持っている人たちが，あるかごを独占的に使えるようにする特別な機能を思いついた。そこで彼女と同僚たちは誰も乗っていないかごを一人の使用者に割り当てるようプログラムできるシステムを作り上げた。その機能があれば，ホテルのスタッフのような使用者は，エレベーターに乗る前に入力する数字コードがもらえるだろう（ハワイのあるホテルでは，サーファーがサーフボードで他の宿泊客に迷惑をかけないようにする目的でそれを利用することを考えたので，この名前がついた）。その特殊機能は今ではホテルやオフィスビルではごく普通になっている。
1. (e) ― (b) ―
(f) 2―(d) 3―(a) 4―(c)
5. (a) ― (d) ― (b) ― (c) 6―(b) 7―(b)
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