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Comment by throwaway66920 | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think I agree with that. If we imagine people can pass through each other but must still obey the rules of the queue (one person at an item at a time) the overall wait time is not going to change much. When you think back to your buffets, I hope it’s not the physical difficult of maneuvering around people stalled at an item you don’t want that takes up the most time.

Queuing theory is very appropriate for this. It’s a queue.

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But people don't obey the rules of abstract queues at buffets. People circle around, bump into each other so that both change directions, squeeze themselves between others, and so on. To model this, you need to (IMO) model them as a system of interacting particles with properties that vary as the 'pressure' in the system increases (e.g. the 'diameter' of the particle increases by people holding in their arms, their speed varies as people slow down when it gets more crowded, etc.

Buffets are not like bank teller queues. Or maybe I should just visit different restaurants.

However, they're not significantly less-ordered than bank teller queues; They're hardly a "crowd" of independent actors following no rules beyond physics + goal that would necessitate treatment as a particle simulation.

You're right if you wanted a really in-depth and granular model, but it's doubtful you'll find significantly improved insights versus treating it as a simple queue, and ignoring the fact that people are a little dynamic.

As far as I've seen, most buffets constitute a line with a little bit of people skipping around. But it's very close to well-ordered.

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