This year, the North Pole has been buried under record-breaking snowfall \u2014 so much, in fact, that entire workshops briefly vanished under snowdrifts taller than Santa\u2019s sleigh. The elves are exhausted from nonstop shovelling, the reindeer keep losing track of the landing strip, and Santa has finally admitted that things can\u2019t continue like this. To keep the whole Arctic operation functioning, he decides to rely on control theory \u2014 an approach used to automatically keep systems stable and well-regulated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If Santa were genuinely applying control theory to manage the snow, what would he do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
a. \u2744\ufe0f\ud83c\udf85\ud83d\udcfa Install an impressive \u201cSnow Command Station\u201d with giant screens displaying snow levels at every square metre of the North Pole village. Live drone footage would track drifting snow, and reindeer would gather around the monitors like it\u2019s movie night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
b. \ud83e\uddf9\ud83e\udddd\u200d\u2640\ufe0f\ud83d\udccb Manage the entire snow-clearing routine in advance by pre-planning snow-clearing schedules for the whole winter: assigning shovelling zones, designating emergency salt buckets, and scheduling cocoa breaks so no elf collapses into a snowbank again like last winter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
c. \ud83c\udf28\ufe0f\ud83d\udcc8\ud83d\udef7 Tell the elves to constantly adjust their snow-clearing speed depending on how fast the snow is piling up and how clear the paths need to be. If snowfall increases, they shovel more; if it eases up, they slow down. In this way, he avoids disasters like last year\u2019s incident, when the sleigh got stuck because the runway vanished under half a metre of fresh powder.<\/p>\n\n\n