stat week 5

Help Desk Operations (M/G/1)

The Help Desk for a small business college is staffed by a single employee who handles requests on a first-come, first-serve basis. Requests for help have been observed at an average rate of 5 per hour and follow the Poisson distribution. The times to service the requests have an average of 7 minutes with a standard deviation of 2.5 minutes and follow the normal probability distribution.

a. What is the probability that a student will have to wait for service? b. On average, how many students will be waiting for service? c. How long is the average wait for service?