Lies, damn lies and queueing theory.

Statistics tells us lots of things. Usually people with whom we don't spend a lot of time (cause we don't like them) trott out statistics on all sorts of 'interesting' things.  

These statistics tell us things like '70% of the world's women are poor' (which did make me realise how rubbish woman are), or that we spend 'a third of our life asleep, a third at work, and a third waiting in a queue for something'. Normally there is a slightly awkward pause at this point, as really no matter how 'shocking' the statistic is, we are always underwhelmed.) 

But I do believe the one about spending a third of our lives waiting in queues. Yes, partly because I made it up because I want to talk about queuing. 

And this is what I have learned about queues:

• In queues people talk about the weather. 
  
• This is the ONLY subject allowed.
• Any digression and you are shunned (for a third of your life).  
  
• When you're in a queue, whilst talking clouds, it is impossible to think about anything other than how to improve the current system. 
• Which is rarely hard. 
• Argentina is amazing for, but not at, queueing.  
• Pharmacies offer the best examples of this, methinks. There, you have to queue for a number just to join a queue! Imagine: someone had to think that up.  
• Older people love queues, and pharmacies. 
• Older people make up around 80% of the queueing population. 
• Older people are prioritised in queues. I respect this. But what age difference legitimates a queue jump?
• A suggestion: old people should carry their age on a piece of paper. In any queue, oldest person goes first.  
• At any one time in the UK, a 1/3 of all grandparents are waiting for something. That's the thanks they get for winning a war. 
• Queueing was invented by a Frenchman. Well, the word anyway. So it's still their fault. 
• David G Kendall, in 1953, produced Kendall's Notation, introducing the layperson to the A/B/C of queueing (where A determines the interarrival time distribution, B the service time distribution, C as the number of servers). 
• Which makes David G Kendall the most pointless man on earth. 

And that is about that.