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by bru_
3938 days ago
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"But the researchers experimented with different queuing systems, and when they told volunteer queuers that people would be selected from the queue and served at random, the average wait was reduced." This is all around a much better system than FIFO. Of course LIFO is the fastest on average, but you want there to be a reasonable, predictable bound on how much time an individual can expect to wait. An extension of this policy could be "partially random first come first served", where you just start at the first person in line and flip a coin with probability 0 <= p <= 1 of getting heads, and if you get heads they get served. If you get tails you move to the next person, with the only exception being the last person in line. In practice, for airports I would prefer to have the people sitting in the back board first. Then you wouldn't have so much congestion from people blocking the aisle while they stuff their bag into the overhead compartment. Also you shouldn't have to sit in your seat longer for the same flight if you bought a first class ticket. |
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Right, this is generally handled by how we (implicitly) judge queues, not by the average wait, but by the average square of the wait, and penalize extreme wait times that are concentrated on one person.
It's why it's better to have one line feed into multiple clerks rather than each clearly get their own line: because there's the risk of some transaction taking a long time and screwing everyone in that line.
Single-queue avoids that by allowing people to be routed around that clerk. There's no change in the average, but you've avoided major quadratic penalties.
It's also the problem with LIFO: even if you could somehow stop people from leaving their early-entrance spot (!!) to re-enter for a better one, you're still sticking a few people with horrible wait times, which good metrics penalize.