What is the Probability of Getting a Raise at McBurger's Drive-Thru?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around calculating the probability of an employee at McBurger's drive-thru receiving a raise based on customer service metrics. The scenario involves a Poisson distribution, with a focus on the probability of serving exactly 20 customers in one hour over a three-hour monitoring period.

Discussion Character

  • Mathematical reasoning

Main Points Raised

  • One participant states the probability of serving exactly 20 customers in one hour is approximately 0.0624 but is uncertain about how to incorporate the requirement of "at least 1 of these 3 hours."
  • Another participant suggests considering the probability that none of the 3 hours meets the criterion as a potential approach to the problem.
  • A participant notes the independence of events in the Poisson distribution and references a property of probabilities regarding independent events.
  • Despite the hints provided, some participants express confusion about how to proceed with the calculations.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants generally agree on the use of the Poisson distribution and its properties, but there is no consensus on how to apply these concepts to solve the problem at hand.

Contextual Notes

The discussion does not resolve the mathematical steps needed to calculate the desired probability, and assumptions regarding the independence of events and the properties of the Poisson distribution are acknowledged but not fully explored.

rayne1
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Problem:
McBurger’s drive-thru has only one service window and serves an average of 2 customers every 5 minutes. 70% of customers order drinks from the drive-thru.

The manager monitors the employee at the drive-thru for the next 3 hours. He will give the employee a raise if exactly 20 customers are served per hour in at least 1 of these hours. What is the probability that the employee will receive a raise?
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I know the probability that there are exactly 20 customers in the next hour is 0.0624 (rounded), but don't know how to deal with the "at least 1 of these (3) hours" part of the question.
 
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Hi rayne!

Hint: what is the chance that none of the 3 hours satisfies the criterion?
 
I like Serena said:
Hi rayne!

Hint: what is the chance that none of the 3 hours satisfies the criterion?

Not sure :(
 
rayne said:
Not sure :(

A property of the Poisson distribution is that the events in each time interval are independent from each other.

And one of the properties of probabilities is that if $A,B,C$ pairwise independent, then:
$$P(A\wedge B\wedge C) = P(A)P(B)P(C)$$
 
I like Serena said:
A property of the Poisson distribution is that the events in each time interval are independent from each other.

And one of the properties of probabilities is that if $A,B,C$ pairwise independent, then:
$$P(A\wedge B\wedge C) = P(A)P(B)P(C)$$

Okay, but I'm still unclear on how to solve it.
 

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