It's a Beautiful Sunny Day After a Week of Rainy

question 33

Essay

It's a beautiful sunny day after a week of rainy weather and both of the local car washes are busy. One car wash is fully automated, touchless, and can wash a vehicle of any size to a dazzling luster in 5 minutes flat. The other car wash is a fund raiser staffed by eager amateurs that work on one car at a time and can finish it in about 4 minutes (their time is governed by the Poisson distribution). Customer arrivals at both car washes are Poisson distributed with a mean of 10 per hour. How long does it take the average customer to work his way through either system? How many customers are in the systems on average?

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Definitions:

Timing and Syncopation

The strategic scheduling and coordination of events or actions, especially to achieve maximum effect or to synchronize with other processes.

Self-stereotyping

The process by which individuals assign stereotypes to themselves based on their own group membership, which can affect their behavior and self-concept.

Double Consciousness

A term describing the internal conflict experienced by subjugated groups in an oppressive society, particularly the sense of looking at oneself through the eyes of a dominant culture.

Transference

In psychology, the process by which individuals project feelings, attitudes, or desires onto someone else, often unconsciously and rooted in previous relationships or experiences.