Singularity on the Plane

The procedure seems to change every semester. Once it was on Kinanti. Once it was in BNI. This time it’s in Bank Mandiri.

I arrived there around 10 AM and got number 56. I needed to wait until my number is called by the female worker. The currently called numbers were in the 200s, and simple inquiry revealed that the number will go to 500 before going back to 1. I was additionally told that mine should be called around an hour later (which means around 11 AM).

So I left to browse the web. I took note that I left at 10:18 and the last called number was 285. I arrived back at 10.56 and the last called number was 391.

I deliberately wrote all those info because I wanted to predict when I would be called. After finding a seat, I started to calculate.

The average rate of people processed during my absence was (391 - 285) people / (56 - 18) minutes, which is around 2.789 people/minute.

Let us assume that the processing rate is constant. My number is equivalent to 556, so I would be called around ((556 - 391) / 2.789) minutes later, which is around 59 minutes later. Because the time was 10:56, that means I will be called around 11:55.

I waited while practising writing some kanji. I got called at 11:57. Pretty close, eh? (compare with the 11 AM prediction which was pulled out of thin air)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007 at 2:39 pm by Agro Rachmatullah and is filed under Life, Math. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.