Suppose we expect 2 arrivals per hour and arrivals have the Poisson distribution.
1. What is the probability that 1, 2, or 3 people will come during the next hour?
2. What is the probability that more than 18 people will come during an 8-hour day?
3. A charitable organization asks you to give a copy of their brochure to everyone who comes in during the next 8-hour day. How many brochures do they need to give you before the start of the day so that the probability is less than 0.01 that you will run out of brochures before the day is over?
• Patients arrive at your emergency room at a rate of 2 per hour. The average service time per patient is 20 minutes. In other words, you treat an average of 3 patients per hour if patients come in that fast.
1. To proceed with your analysis, what do you assume about the distributions of arrivals and service times?
2. What is the average number of patients in the ER (waiting or being served?) (Use formulae on p.21-22)
3. What is the average length of time that patients spend from the time they enter the ER to the time they leave?