Having spent time here in Disney World, I have learned two
absolutes:
1)It doesn’t matter when you come, there is no “down”
season. It’s always going to be packed
2) There will be lines for everything, but nothing will make
you wait longer than the bus
The Poisson Distribution is an important tool to describe
the discrete probability of events when the average occurrence rate is
known. In other words, if you know the
average occurrence of an event over a period of time, Poisson posited that one
could also know the probability of each number of occurrences of that event.
So, if we know that, on average, 2.5 people will try to board
a bus every second here in Disney World, then the probability that zero people
will try to board a bus in the next second would look like this:
e^(-2.5) × 2.5^0 / 0!
= 0.082 × 1 / 1 (2.5^0 = 1 and 0! = 1)
= 0.082
Alternatively, the probability that four people will board a
bus:
e^(-2.5) × 2.5^4 / 4!
= 0.082 × 39.063 / 24
= 0.134
So, the Poisson Distribution is able to effectively predict
the probability of someone boarding a bus in the next second at Disney
World. An equally important tool in
understanding behavior here at Disney is the Dirkmaat Constant, which posits,
for every person that boards a bus here in Disney World, the probability that
it will take too long and Paul will mutter something sarcastic is constant at
1.0.
