4 ms·

Another random software engineer claiming a fundamental theoretical problem irrelevant... Queuing theory deals with the stochastic behavior of a discreet event

Another random software engineer claiming a fundamental theoretical problem irrelevant... Queuing theory deals with the stochastic behavior of a discreet event in at a single queue, and possibly multiple ones connected in some structured manner. It's importance is that it can determine before hand what are the stochastic boundary of the system. Your whole idea of 99 events and 101 events are so strawman that I don't know where to start poking at the holes... For one thing, the rate of something has its definition, there is jitter or busyness. To say something has a rate is plainly a impractical concept. As there is nothing in the network that had steady rate... Edit: I should stand corrected that the parent does not really miss the meaning of queuing theory. It was just that I only read the first paragraph.

kqr 5y ago
But things do have an average rate. And in my experience, this is very practical information. Almost daily I plug mean rates into Little's law and get useful numbers out. (Yes, I do verify my predictions.)
- vishnugupta 5y ago
  > Little's law I guess that's the OP's point that you can't escape from talking about queues and which you sort of validated by bringing up Little's law. Queues are literally everywhere around us in the physical world. It needs to be understood at a basic level -- Little's law is good enough and only requires primary school math. If execs aren't able to understand such a ubiquitous and simple concept then I don't know what to say. Average flow rate is indeed useful but please explain that along with a queue and show whoever needs to know how queues can grow unboundedly if output rate is consistently less than input rate. And if needed explain further the upstream consequences of unbounded queue growth.

4 ms·

Another random software engineer claiming a fundamental theoretical problem irrelevant... Queuing theory deals with the stochastic behavior of a discreet event

by justicezyx 5y ago

kqr 5y ago
But things do have an average rate. And in my experience, this is very practical information. Almost daily I plug mean rates into Little's law and get useful numbers out. (Yes, I do verify my predictions.)
- vishnugupta 5y ago
  > Little's law I guess that's the OP's point that you can't escape from talking about queues and which you sort of validated by bringing up Little's law. Queues are literally everywhere around us in the physical world. It needs to be understood at a basic level -- Little's law is good enough and only requires primary school math. If execs aren't able to understand such a ubiquitous and simple concept then I don't know what to say. Average flow rate is indeed useful but please explain that along with a queue and show whoever needs to know how queues can grow unboundedly if output rate is consistently less than input rate. And if needed explain further the upstream consequences of unbounded queue growth.