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        general >> wanted >> hotdesking
        
(Message started by: simplex on Apr 18^th, 2005, 11:08am)

Title: hotdesking
Post by simplex on Apr 18^th, 2005, 11:08am

Hello all

Is it possible to mathematically work this out.

There are 11 people in my lab-office; we split our time between working in the lab and in the office. The split is anything between 50-50 to 25/75 (or vice-versa). i.e if 50-50 you typically spend 1/2 the time in the lab and rest sitting on a computer. So for 11 people there are 6 computers. ..people walk-in, walk out. Some with a smile if they find a free computer some a bit miffed if it is busy.

I wanna work out - given the above split - what is the minimum number of computers required? A 7th would be good - but how do I justify it?

cheers
sim

PS: Needless to say, the way people walk in-out and split their times is pretty random.

Title: Re: hotdesking
Post by towr on Apr 18^th, 2005, 2:45pm

Without some further information about de distribution of the splits, it's hard to say.
In the worst case everyone will still want to use a computer, because the 25-75% they're somewhere else may not come till later.
On average you could say 50% of the people need a computer, so 5.5 (6) is enough.
You could also argue you want one standarddeviation above mean. But we don't know what the standard deviation is, because we don't have the distribution.

Title: Re: hotdesking
Post by fatball on Jul 15^th, 2005, 6:34am

I think you may formulate the problem as a linear programming model and solve for the minimum number of computers required.