Exponential Distribution

(Also known as Negative Exponential)

This is a classic distribution used for arrival times of anything where one arrival is independent of the next.

Examples are customers arriving at a store, patients arriving at a hospital. Sometimes it is also relevant to breakdowns.

This is the default distribution used in Simul8 Work Entry Point objects.

This distribution peaks at 0. This creates interesting effects because it means most samples are less than the average, but a few samples are very large. So the few large samples balance the many small samples. In its use for customer arrivals this matches many studies of behavior of real customer arrivals. For example, if 60 customers enter a store per hour, you will not see one per minute. Instead you see several bunched together in one minute and then a long gap, averaging out at 60 per hour.

See Also