How is the Carpool Search Sorted?
posted by Ben Engebreth on 02.25.2005
When you register here you are asked for the zip code of both your home and your work (could be school too). Presumably, you'll want to find someone who is close to your home and close to your work to carpool with. Ideally (really really ideally) this person would live next to you and work in the same building as you. This assumption of an ideal carpool is how the search for a potential carpool pal is sorted here (as approximated by the resolution of zip code). That is, the search determines the distance from your home to everyone elses home (as determined by zip code) and also the distance between your work and everyone elses. In the ideal case I mentioned above, the sum of those two distances would equal zero. Therefore, we sort based on this sum so that you get the people that live close to where you live and work close to where you work listed first. This way, that hypothetical neighbor who works in your building would come up first on the list.
This sum of distances is the big green number listed on the right side of the search and also under the user's profile. The home to home and work to work distances are also listed.
Update: I've added the option to search by distance from home and distance from work. The default still sorts by the sum of those distances. The option is at the bottom right of the page by where the page numbers are listed.
Here's a pic:
