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The waiting time paradox: why is my bus always late? (2018)
, or, Why Is My Bus Always Late? Image Source: Wikipedia License CC-BY-SA 3.0 If you, like me, frequently commute via public transit, you may be familiar with the following situation: You arrive at the bus stop, ready to catch your bus: a line that advertises arrivals every 10 minutes. You glance at your watch and note the time...
The reason I sought data from Rapid Ride routes in particular is that for much of the day, the buses are scheduled at regular intervals of between 10 and 15 minutes — not to mention the fact that I'm a frequent passenger on the C-line. In order to explore whether the waiting time paradox applies, let's group the data by line, direction, and scheduled interval, then re-stack these similar arrivals together as if they had happened in sequence. Even without a statistical test, it's clear by eye that the actual arrival intervals are definitely not exponentially distributed, which is the basic assumption on which the waiting time paradox rests.
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