You are outside a well known restaurant, waiting in queue, with 18 couples in front of you. You know there are forty tables inside, and you think an average meal will take one hour.

How long will you have to wait, on average?

PS. This problem comes from queueing theory, but you don't have to know anything about it to find the answer!

Let us assume that all of the tables are full, on average each table will empty every:-

(average mealtime / no of tables) = (60/40) = 1.5 minutes

that means, the queue in front of you will drop by 1 couple every 1.5 minutes.

since you are the 19th person/couple in the queue, you will have to wait:-

19x1.5 = 28.5 minutes

Posted by Juggler on 2004-08-07 11:44:41