(This is the only elevator in a 5-floor building)
After arriving at a floor on your path, open the door for 20 seconds and then close the door.
If you are in the process of closing the door and the circuit is interrupted, open the door for 20 seconds, and then close the door.
Each floor has an operating panel that has ascend and descend buttons. When the ascend button lights up, respond to the summon by going to the corresponding floor and going up. If a descend button lights up, respond to the summon by going to the corresponding floor and going down.
Default settings:
Travel to all the floors that correspond with the buttons that were signaled on the operating panel.
Button number 1 corresponds to floor 1
Button number 2 corresponds to floor 2
Button number 3 corresponds to floor 3
Button number 4 corresponds to floor 4
Button number 5 corresponds to floor 5
Never turn around when you are on a path to go somewhere. If you are going UP to a floor, continue moving to the floor you were summoned to, even if a button to go down summons you to another floor. If an up button on another floor is clicked while going up, stop at the floor you were signaled to and open the door, but only if you have not passed that floor yet.
Never turn around if you are on the path to go DOWN as well. If you are going down and are summoned to another floor with the up button lit up, continue on your way, and skip that location until after you stop at your initial location first. If the down button is clicked on another floor, stop at that corresponding floor only if it is on the way.
If you are summoned to a floor that an up button has been pressed when you are going down or a down button has summoned you when you are going up, skip that floor until you stopped at the floor you were going to first, and return back to that floor after.
Counterintuitive Fall 2024 
I’m liking what I’m seeing here, BlogUser.
Some notes.
I appreciate the value of examples, but I’m not sure the Elevator will feel the same. The one you’ve outlined here makes perfect sense:
But the Overall Instruction “These directions apply to all floors” is not as clear. Can you find the precise language to indicate without a dozen examples that on its way UP it should stop on every floor at which anyone has pressed the UP button? It would ignore floors on which the DOWN button had been pressed until it reaches . . . how far, exactly? Also, how would it respond to a button pressed INSIDE the elevator for an intervening floor on its way UP?
More examples:
Yep. You seem to have anticipated that. Can you describe the rule without specifying individual floors as examples? (Again, they’re good for US, the general readers, but they’re just extra language for the elevator.)
Unclear. Sounds as if the person on the 2nd floor is delivering passengers.
Same note as before. Can you state the rule without the examples?
I do admire your work here, BlogUser, despite my harping on the same objection repeatedly. Sorry about that. I think the best instruction you’ve invented here is “do no turn around.” Maybe you can generalize that as a DEFAULT instruction that the elevator follows unless it receives clear instructions to the contrary.
If you choose to revise, please just OPEN this post in EDIT, make CHANGES, and click UPDATE. Don’t rename your post or start a new one. Put the post into Feedback Please and let me know you’ve made changes.
🙂
Thank you for your feedback :). I have applied changes to the original post.
Lots of good new work here, BlogUser. Thank you for putting in the effort. I like your general rules for continuing UP or DOWN as a default subject to exceptions.
One thing here that makes sense for US but not for the ELEVATOR is the instruction to pick up passengers. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the elevator will follows instructions given by button presses whether passengers get on the elevator or not. Or off. It’s not concerned about who’s riding or where. It responds to button presses only.
It doesn’t need to know that a person riding the elevator pressed the button for a particular floor. It goes to that floor regardless of passenger needs.
And it OPENS THE DOOR after stopping. And it CLOSES THE DOOR after a prescribed time, subject to exceptions such as someone breaking the circuit by entering or exiting while the door was closing. Right?
[This really is a rich set of instructions. One that just occurred to me: there’s no way to RETRACT a button press. So, once a would-be passenger presses 3 on the way UP, the elevator will stop at 3 and open the door EVEN IF the passenger tries to correct the trip by pressing 5 “instead.”] And, guess what: the elevator DOESN’T HAVE TO KNOW THIS. It will respond to 3 and to 5 regardless of the passenger’s needs.
Your ONE EXAMPLE is useful to describe to your NON-ELEVATOR audience why you crafted the rule you did, but it’s NOT NECESSARY as part of your instructions to the elevator. Maybe you want to produce a clean set of INSTRUCTIONS and explain them in a different section.
Still fun? Your work is still improving. 🙂
Provisionally graded.
For grade improvement, if you wish, revise your text in Edit mode and Update. Alert me that you’ve made improvements and want a Regrade.
As always, Responses to feedback are strenuously recommended even if you decline to revise.
I really enjoy the example you provided from Elf. I have taken out the “people” in the directions and the example to provide a clearer set of instructions for the elevator. I also added in the opening and closing the door (I did not think of this before). As always, thank you for the feedback, I will enter my work back into feedback please. 🙂
I’m going to start a new nested-set of Replies here.
After arriving at a floor on your path, open the door for 20 seconds and then close the door when those 20 seconds are over.
—Nice. The elevator will ignore “when those 20 seconds are over” because they add no new information. You should cut anything the elevator would ignore.
If there is motion in between the doorway, keep the door open until the motion has stopped, then close the door and continue to the next signaled floor.
—”in between the doorway” is very hard to understand.
—Not to be TOO BIG a pain in the ass, but the elevator probably opens the door in response to a disturbance in the circuit for a prescribed time and then closes the door. It doesn’t track “until the motion has stopped”; it just responds to the broken circuit.
If you are in the process of closing the door and you detect a motion in the doorway, open the door again and wait for the motion to clear to then close the door.
—This is completely redundant of the instruction above.
On each floor there is an UP-arrow button and a DOWN arrow button, the up arrow means to ascend, and the down arrow means to descend.
—You don’t need to define terms as you would for a human reader.
—Proceed as if the elevator couldn’t care less what an UP ARROW “is!” It cares only what to do when the UP ARROW is pressed, or lit.
Default settings:
Travel to all the floors that correspond with the buttons signaled on the operating panel.
Button number 1 corresponds to floor 1
Button number 2 corresponds to floor 2
Button number 3 corresponds to floor 3
Button number 4 corresponds to floor 4
Button number 5 corresponds to floor 5
—I can’t decide if this is needed or not. Partly, the answer depends on the rest of your instruction set.
Never turn around when you are on a path to go somewhere. If you are going UP to a floor, continue moving to that signaled floor, even if a button to go down is pressed on another floor. If an up button on another floor is clicked while going up, stop at the floor you were signaled to and open the door, but only if you have not passed that floor yet.
—Nice.
—I like the default setting.
—But, how do we override the default in the “exception” situations?
You say:
—WE HUMANS might say, “if it’s on the way.”
—Doing so would eliminate the need to spell out the negative case: “but only if you have not passed that floor yet.”
—Once the elevator has passed the “additional” summon, the intermediate floor is no longer “on the way.”
—I DO LIKE “summon” as a way to indicate that the elevator has been called to come to a particular floor.
—And I also like “direct” as a way to indicate the floor TO WHICH a passenger sends the elevator by pressing one of the INSIDE buttons.
Still in? 🙂
Yes, I am always up for feedback. I have entered my revised work back into the feedback please category. I am looking to see if I successfully made changes that improved my work.
You absolutely did make changes that improved your work.
Ready to make them even better?
[I did tell you in class that this seemingly trivial assignment has the same grade value as your Stone Money essay, right?]
HUMAN READERS
You may find it helpful (your readers may find it helpful, too) to create a section of explanatory notes to flesh out what will probably be very dry instructions to the elevator. But any time you figure out that an example or explanation is irrelevant or redundant, eliminate it.
THE ELEVATOR
Examples are more likely to confuse the elevator than clarify your instructions.
(This is the only elevator in a 5-floor building)
—An example of a comment for the HUMAN section.
—You would write a different set of instructions for a multi-elevator building.
After arriving at a floor on your path, open the door for 20 seconds and then close the door.
—This is beautiful.
—I don’t know what a “path” is, and it may need clarification, since Every Floor on the way to the top of the building would be “on the path” to the top.
—Maybe there’s a Priority List of stops.
—The Elevator may have to skip past a DOWN request on the way to deliver a passenger UP despite that the DOWN request was along the path.
—What’s really beautiful about the instruction is that it says to OPEN the door and CLOSE the door without considering whether passengers entered or exited.
If you are in the process of CLOSING the door and the circuit is interrupted, OPEN the door for 20 seconds, and then CLOSE the door.
—Really beautiful.
—I’m going to start CAPITALIZING the ACTION COMMANDS so they’re always obvious. I’ve started with yours in the instruction above.
Each floor has an operating panel that has ascend and descend buttons. When the ascend button lights up, respond to the summon by going to the corresponding floor and going up. If a descend button lights up, respond to the summon by going to the corresponding floor and going down.
—Here we have a mixture of HUMAN notes and ELEVATOR instructions.
—Can you simply instruct the elevator to PROCEED to the floor that corresponds to any lighted SUMMONS button?
—What happens after the elevator gets there will not always be to PROCEED up, right? There may be no human present to give further commands. Or the human who accidentally pressed Up may enter and press a Destination Button for a Lower Floor.
Default settings:
—I really like the idea of Default Settings! 🙂
Travel to all the floors that correspond with the buttons that were signaled on the operating panel.
—Could terminology help here?
—Respond to all Summons Buttons by PROCEEDING to the corresponding floor.
—Respond to all Destination Buttons by PROCEEDING to the corresponding floor.
—Should the Elevator be instructed to OPEN the door when it arrives?
Button number 1 corresponds to floor 1
Button number 2 corresponds to floor 2
Button number 3 corresponds to floor 3
Button number 4 corresponds to floor 4
Button number 5 corresponds to floor 5
—You might have to convince me that these are needed.
Never turn around when you are on a path to go somewhere. If you are going UP to a floor, continue moving to the floor you were summoned to, even if a button to go down summons you to another floor. If an up button on another floor is clicked while going up, stop at the floor you were signaled to and open the door, but only if you have not passed that floor yet.
—Are these more Default Commands?
—Hmmmm. I like the thought process and I think I could follow these instructions without wasting effort.
—They sound like examples that could be eliminate by clearer instructions on where to go when summoned or how to establish priorities for stops while PROCEEDING UP.
Never turn around if you are on the path to go DOWN as well. If you are going down and are summoned to another floor with the up button lit up, continue on your way, and skip that location until after you stop at your initial location first. If the down button is clicked on another floor, stop at that corresponding floor only if it is on the way.
—Are these more Default Commands?
—Hmmmm. The more I think about it, we might not need the NEVER TURN AROUND rule if we’re good enough at describing simple trips.
—They sound like examples that could be eliminate by clearer instructions on where to go when summoned or how to establish priorities for stops while PROCEEDING UP.
If you are summoned to a floor that an up button has been pressed when you are going down or a down button has summoned you when you are going up, skip that floor until you stopped at the floor you were going to first, and return back to that floor after.
Permit me to try an example of my own, please, BlogUser:
—Respond to all Summons Buttons by PROCEEDING to the corresponding floor. (You can add OPEN and CLOSE the door language after you’re happy with this part.)
—If proceeding up, IGNORE all Down Summons.
—If proceeding down, IGNORE all UP Summons.
—(You can add instructions about PROCEEDING whenever the door is closed if you think that’s needed.)
Check me if I’ve missed something, but I think if the elevator responds to all Summons Buttons and ignores Summons for the opposite direction while doing so, it will get to the top destination and run out of UP summons. Then it will have no choice but to answer the nearest Down Summons. Right? And the IGNORE instruction will keep it from turning around.
We’ll still need to instruct it to stop at Destination floors along the way to accommodate passengers who want to get off shortly after getting on, but that is a different matter than what we have going HERE.
I suppose it’s clear now that I’m working on this assignment right along with you, never having assigned it before and not exactly knowing how it would turn out.
I hope that’s OK and still (if it ever did) seems like a valuable writing exercise. Personally, I’m fascinated by the process and will be thrilled to award good grades to anyone with the patience to play along. Thanks for being on the team so far.