Histogram of weekday printing load
For the last few months, demand for printing has been skyrocketing. We continue to see record numbers of pages being printed—frequently 6000–7000 pages are printed every day. For reference, in past semesters a heavy day of printing would be only around 4500 pages. The current printing situation is financially unsustainable for us. In addition, printers are frequently jamming due to their age and the massive loads placed on them. For these reasons, we must reluctantly further decrease the daily and semesterly print quotas.
In order to guide the debate on revising the print quota, statistics were collected from February 3rd through February 8th by nickimp and a few others. Since weekdays and weekends have different print quotas, they were analyzed separately. In the graphs below, the x-axis is the number of pages printed, and the y-axis is the number of people who printed that number of pages. For example, on February 3, there were 55 people who printed 1 page, 48 people who printed 2 pages, etc.
These estimates must be considered rough at best, since printing demand varies considerably on the time of the semester, day of the week, how many other people are waiting to print something, and other factors.
To approximate the effect of lowering the daily page limit to N, each data point of i pages printed was replaced with min(i, N). Assuming 80 weekdays per semester and a cost of 1.281¢/page, the estimated effects of lowering the quota are:
| New quota | Pages saved | % decrease in pages printed | Cost saved per | # of members affected | % of members affected | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Semester | Year | |||||
| 12 | 888 | 7.167% | 284 | 568 | 409 | 25% |
| 10 | 1946 | 15.706% | 623 | 1245 | 574 | 35% |
| 8 | 3334 | 26.909% | 1067 | 2134 | 741 | 45% |
Using the same assumptions as above, the estimated effects are:
| New quota | % decrease in pages printed | Cost saved per | % of members affected | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Semester | Year | |||
| 24 | 8.58% | 124 | 248 | 28% |
| 15 | 32.24% | 464 | 929 | 49% |
| 10 | 50.29% | 724 | 1448 | 59% |
| 8 | 58.46% | 842 | 1674 | 63.37% |
Extrapolating from last semester's data, and assuming that people stop printing whenever they hit their quota, the projected effects of lowering semester quotas are:
| New quota | # of pages printed | Difference | Amount saved | # members affected | % of members affected |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 250 (status quo) | 294,869 | — | — | — | — |
| 200 | 282,117 | 12752 | $190 | 371 | 7.5% |
| 150 | 256,690 | 38179 | $573 | 656 | 13.3% |
| 125 | 237,800 | 56069 | $841 | 859 | 17.5% |
| 100 | 213,229 | 81640 | $1224 | 1114 | 22.7% |
| 75 | 181,089 | 113780 | $1706 | 1462 | 29.8% |
| 50 | 138,101 | 156768 | $2350 | 1994 | 40.7% |