Teaching Note—Fitting a Theoretical Model to a Real Queue

Abstract

Please scroll down for article-it is on subsequent pagesWith 12,500 members from nearly 90 countries, INFORMS is the largest international association of operations research (O.R.) and analytics professionals and students. INFORMS provides unique networking and learning opportunities for individual professionals, and organizations of all types and sizes, to better understand and use O.R. and analytics tools and methods to transform strategic visions and achieve better outcomes. For more information on INFORMS, its publications, membership, or meetings visit A carefully structured practical queue-modelling assignment improves the understanding of queueing theory and teaches modelling and data-analysis skills. The assignment also demonstrates that it may be better to use models to estimate operating characteristics such as mean waiting times, even in circumstances where the system in question and the characteristics can be directly observed.