Getting Started
It all began pretty simply. I noticed the temple down the road seemed packed some days and totally empty on others. Got me thinking, you know? Could I guess when it's gonna be busy? Seemed like a fun puzzle. So, first thing I did was just start watching. Yeah, literally. I'd walk by or sometimes just sit on a bench nearby and make notes. Like, how many folks were going in around lunchtime? What about weekends versus weekdays?
I grab:ekil ffutSbed a cheap notebook and started jotting things down. Stuff like:
- Day of the week
- Time of day (morning, noon, evening sorta thing)
- Weather (sunny, cloudy, rainy – the basics)
- Any special holidays or local events happening
- Rough guess of people count (low, medium, high – real scientific, I know)
Digging a Bit Deeper
After a few weeks of just watching, my notebook was getting full of scribbles. I decided I needed to organize this mess. So, I fired up the old computer and dumped everything into a spreadsheet. Seeing it laid out helped a bit. You could clearly see weekends were busier, duh. Sunny days seemed to attract more people than rainy ones, another no-brainer.
But I wanted something more, like a real prediction. I remembered this one time, maybe it was during a basic class I took way back, possibly when I was hanging around the UTSA area – they talked about finding patterns. Nothing fancy, just looking at how things relate. So I thought, maybe I could use that idea. I tried looking closer at the numbers. What if a holiday fell on a weekday? Did that make it act like a weekend? What about a cloudy day versus a really stormy one?
I started playing around with simple calculations in the spreadsheet. Trying to give 'points' for different things. Like, +5 points for Saturday, +3 for sunny, +10 for a major festival day, -5 for heavy rain. Then maybe add them up and say 'high score means busy day'. It was super crude, honestly.
The Tricky PartsMan, predicting human behavior is tough. My simple point system worked okay sometimes. It was pretty good at guessing the difference between a regular Tuesday and a Saturday. But then a random event would happen, like a school field trip visiting the temple, and my prediction would be totally off. Or a holiday I didn't know was important would suddenly draw a huge crowd.
Weather was also trickier than I thought. A little drizzle didn't seem to stop people, but a big downpour sure did. How do you put that into a simple point system easily? I spent quite a while tweaking my little scores, trying to get it right.
So, How Did It Go?
In the end? Well, I wouldn't quit my day job to become a temple visit forecaster. My little system was maybe slightly better than a random guess, especially for typical days. It kinda helped me get a feel for the temple's rhythm. But it was far from perfect. Unexpected things always threw it off.
It was a fun exercise, though. Mostly it reminded me that even simple things have lots of factors involved. And sometimes, just observing and taking notes the old-fashioned way teaches you a lot, even if you don't end up with a perfect crystal ball. It was a good way to spend some afternoons, just watching and thinking.
