Anyone know of a term for this kind of behaviour? I've never seen it named, though I do recall an article that made the HN front page that demonstrated this effect with the New York subway.
Anyone know of a term for this kind of behaviour? I've never seen it named, though I do recall an article that made the HN front page that demonstrated this effect with the New York subway.
However, if the buses arrive independently and by a purely random process on average every 10 minutes (i.e. a poisson process), your wait will average 10 minutes.
I always remember this result from probability when waiting for something. It helps me feel less unlucky: of course, I tell myself, it's more likely to land in the time interval between widely spaced busses because those intervals take up more space on the timeline.
Far more interesting is that two of the buggers will always turn up when you don't actually need one. I can prove that by assertion now and fairly confidently be able to appeal to around 60M Britons for testimony as required.
This is not related to "virality" which is my newly made up term for the Lindy Effect.