Queueing theory and practice
There’s an interesting story in the New York Times about queueing, a subject dear to the hearts of some of my colleagues. In one sense queueing is a topic in probability theory, where you work out how long people might have to wait under various circumstances, leading to surprising but useful techniques such as metered on-ramps to motorways. But it’s also a topic in applied psychology: if you get off your plane ten minutes before your bags arrive at the carousel, you’ll notice the wait less if you spend most of it walking. So that’s what the airports make you do.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »