I think it's a lot simpler than that. They're trying to give a "volume discount" for customers with lage packages. To some extent, if the customer had to pay 8 times as much for something that has 8 times the volume (2x in each direction), they'd probably consider it overpriced. There is also an intentional surcharge for oddly-shaped packages, for the packing reason you mentioned and for other reasons. "length + width + height" fairly neatly encapsulates both of these objectives. On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 11:09, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
Some airlines & postal systems charge by the curious measure "length + width + height".
1. Is there a standard name for this measure?
2. What is the scientific/mathematical rationale for using this measure for charging?
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If there were such a mathematical rationale, I would think that it would somehow be based upon the statistics of packing many dissimilar boxes into a standard box -- e.g., a standard shipping container or a UPS truck.
What do we know about the statistics of packing various numbers of differently shaped boxes into a large cubical box?
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