The Elevator Direction Paradox

You might think elevators arrive going up or down with equal probability, but location changes everything. If you are near the top or bottom of a building, the first elevator that arrives is almost always heading toward the building's center.

This phenomenon occurs because elevators effectively turn around at the top and bottom floors. When you wait near these extremes, the system naturally sends an elevator that has just finished its trip in the opposite direction. It feels like a conspiracy of the building, but it is actually a simple result of how transit routes loop. Even physicists were once baffled by this clever trick of probability.