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Posted by birdculture 4 days ago

Alice is impatient(brooker.co.za)
147 points | 40 commentspage 2
reisse 3 days ago|
There is a branch of math dedicated to (among other things) truthfully estimating the waiting time, called queueing theory. I wonder why it wasn't mentioned in the article.
pfdietz 3 days ago||
This feels similar to how nuclear power is perceived, contrasting deaths per TWh and the long tail effect of a rare but serious accident.
zaik 4 days ago||
Is the formula for E_a[X] trivial? I don't see it immediately...
kgwgk 3 days ago|
E[X^2] weights each time with the time, giving the square, and the E[X] in the denominator is the normalisation factor (also required to fix the dimensions).

Say that there are to different waiting times 1s and 3s, and they happen with probability 50% each. The average waiting time (1/2 1+1/2 3) is 2s. However, 75% of the time we are waiting on a 3s event and only 25% on a 1s event. The weighted average is 2.5s. E[X^2]=1/2 1+1/2 9=5(s^2) is not the right answer, it still has to be divided by E[X]=2(s) to get the correct answer.

ggm 3 days ago|
Interesting you work at Amazon and show how end user experience weights to their pessimal experience.

So.. apply that to Amazon design heuristics like author name search on books, and how Amazon return "in the style of" and "not a book but this guy called Charles Dickens makes jigsaws" as high order matches and consider how the end user experience weights to the pessimal yet Amazon can show on average they make more money doing this..

(Understood that engineers and AWS don't influence UX in the storefront or search)

cowthulhu 3 days ago|
Comments like these seem likely to discourage authors from making more interesting posts about niche topics they specialize in, without actually moving the needle on stuff the commenter is pestering about.
ggm 3 days ago||
Yes, has that risk. If I were to neutralise it I'd observe any system which assesses UX will trip over this, the majors are no exception. It serves as a useful reminder tuning isn't optimised solely for your(as a user) benefit.