Saturday, August 18, 2007

Europe, UK Included.

Everyone complains about things in this country when they travel here (lack of good bread or good coffee or whatever). I thought I will start whining about travel "over there", for now, Europe, UK included.
  • When will they learn to stand in one line, no matter how many servers? There must be a queueing theory result that picking from multiple lines using bizarre calculations and angsting about the relative progress rates of different lines is inefficient.
  • Hotel: Need towels, big, fluffy and plenty please. Need showers where I can move comfortably and not have to turn around in-place like a rotisserie.
  • More sensitive BBC please. They had a show that "explored" the topic of how asians in UK had to be coconuts, brown outside and white inside. As is typical of BBC, the issue is phrased as a discussion exploring social trends, but ends up asking a guy on the show if he was a coconut!
  • Me, I am brown outside, black, white, yellow and even brown inside.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Michael Trick (a leading professor in Operations Research) recently talked about the queing theory of grocery store lines on his blog...

http://mat.tepper.cmu.edu/blog/?p=155

6:08 AM  
Blogger metoo said...

Thank you, thank you for the truly satisfying pointer, here it is in easy ref for people who don't want to cut and paste, but just click.

1:18 PM  

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