What follows below is an excerpt from the report I wrote for my eight-grade science project.
In the Chandler Unified School District, the school buses travel thousands of miles each day to pick up and drop off students. Now, imagine if this could be reduced only 10%. The schools could save hundreds of gallons of gas each year. In this project, the goal was to find out whether or not if the bus routes could be made more optimal.
Using a computer program that was written for the purpose of this experiment and using Google Maps, the optimum route was identified. This new route was then compared to the original route. The process was repeated once for each of ten sample routes from Bogle Junior High School.
The results that were obtained show that five of the ten Bogle Bus Routes show a significant decrease in length, two were equal to there original counterpart, and three were within the margin of error (0.1 miles). Overall, the computer generated routes were 9.61% shorter. The results here support the hypothesis, because, since the routes were originally made by hand, many were only nearest-neighbor or ellipsoid sequences. Applying these results to the entire district, it is expected that the district can save 10% of gas and money per year.