Re: Waves of Customers?

On Sun, 28 May 2006 12:20:43 +0930, espyrian <espyrian@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

shiquiliq wrote:
Is there a statistical term or theory that describes the phenomenon by which
customers tend to come into retail stores in waves? This happens even on
weekends, when there are no obvious cues such as noon or 5PM.

Thanks




I think Queuing Theory is what you're after:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queue_theory

That, and "optical illusions".

People are rather bad at estimating what is "random."
And what is repeated does not seem random.

There is a classroom stunt to make the point,
which I remember and reconstruct like this:

Here is homework, to be collected at the start of the next class.
"List 100 heads and tails in order: either flip a coin to
generate the list, *or* write down your own 'randomized'
H or T."

Next day --
The teacher quickly inspects and separates out the "coin" lists
from the "self" lists, almost infallibly, using a simple formula
that he eventually reveals. If there are never 5 H in a row or
5 T, then it was generated without a coin.

--
Rich Ulrich, wpilib@xxxxxxxx
http://www.pitt.edu/~wpilib/index.html
.

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