The organizers of a conference in the Houston Convention Center are evaluating the possibility of setting up a computer area where attendees can check their e-mail on computers provided by the organization. There will be one common queue for all computers and only one person uses a computer at a time. On average there are 19 attendee arrivals per hour and the average time a person spends on the computer is 14 minutes
(a) To ensure that waiting times are not too long, the organizers want to ensure that the utilization of the computers doesn’t exceed 80 percent. At least how many computers do they need to have?
(b) The organizers of the conference have decided to buy 7 computers. Assume that the standard deviation of arrivals is equal to the average inter-arrival time, and the standard deviation of processing times is equal to the average processing time. What is the average waiting time to check e-mails?