{"id":663,"date":"2009-09-29T19:16:17","date_gmt":"2009-09-30T02:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/?p=663"},"modified":"2009-09-29T15:41:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-29T22:41:00","slug":"which-checkout-line-is-faster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/?p=663","title":{"rendered":"Which checkout line is faster?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dan Meyer writes about his research on\u00a0 <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.mrmeyer.com\/?p=4646\">which line is faster at the store<\/a><\/strong>?\u00a0 Awesome.\u00a0 One quick tidbit is the minimum time for one person is about 50 seconds, but an average item adds about 3 seconds.\u00a0 So it's faster to pick a line with up to 17 more items vs a line with one more person that has only one item.<\/p>\n<p>The comments are interesting too, pointing out \"invisible\" effects like will the person use coupons, or want to buy a lotto ticket?\u00a0 The commenters note that you could assign weighted probabilities, which leads to another interesting series of questions.\u00a0 For example, based on probabilities suppose you have the following estimates to get to the head of each line:<\/p>\n<style type=\"text\/css\">\ntable.linedata, table.linedata tr, table.linedata td \n  { border:thin solid gray; border-collapse:collapse; }\n<\/style>\n<div style=\"padding-left: 4em;\">\n<table class=\"linedata\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"3\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><\/td>\n<td colspan=\"3\"><strong>Estimate based on<br \/>\n\"invisible\" factors<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<td><\/td>\n<td><strong>Best <\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>Avg<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>Worst <\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Line 1<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>3 min<\/td>\n<td>5 min<\/td>\n<td>11 min<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Line 2<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>4 min<\/td>\n<td>6 min<\/td>\n<td>10 min<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Line 3<\/strong><\/td>\n<td>5 min<\/td>\n<td>7 min<\/td>\n<td>9 min<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<p>Now which line would you pick?\u00a0 Line 3 is predictable, but Line 1 could finish really fast; or take a really long time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dan Meyer writes about his research on\u00a0 which line is faster at the store?\u00a0 Awesome.\u00a0 One quick tidbit is the minimum time for one person is about 50 seconds, but an average item adds about 3 seconds.\u00a0 So it's faster to pick a line with <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/?p=663\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fun"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=663"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":680,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663\/revisions\/680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}