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On the algebra of queues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2016

J. F. C. Kingman
J. F. C. Kingman*
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
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Extract

The more one studies the vast and ever-growing literature of the theory of queues, the more one is bewildered by the wide variety of mathematical techniques which different authors have used to analyse the same or similar problems. And yet it seems that, beneath the superficial diversity, there is a deeper unity obscured by the special devices and notations characteristic of the different approaches. It is the thesis of this paper that there is indeed such a unity, and that it is best appreciated by observing that the central results of queueing theory, despite the analytical and combinatorial accretions which, by historical accident, they have acquired, are essentially algebraic in character.

Type
Review Paper
Information
Journal of Applied Probability , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , December 1966 , pp. 285 - 326
Copyright
Copyright © Applied Probability Trust 

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