Summer@ICERM 2022 Projects

Consider a parking lot consisting of n consecutive parking spots along a one-way street, where n is a positive integer. Suppose n cars want to park one at a time in the parking lot and each car has a preferred parking spot. Each car coming into the lot initially tries to park in its preferred spot. However, if a car’s preferred spot is already occupied, then it will park in the next available spot. Since the parking lot is along a one-way street, it is not guaranteed that every car will be able to park before driving past the parking lot. This dilemma leads to the idea of a parking function.