Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2003/iii/paper-34/1/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2003 iii Paper 34 1 Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Use one particle for each telephone line, including unused lines. Let be the number of free lines, the number of callers waiting for or being checked by an operator, and the number using automated service. Then . These are the three colonies of a closed migration process, with directed cycle and departure ratesRejected attempted calls leave the state unchanged. They must not be represented as extra customers in the waiting stage.
Equivalently the state is with . Its transitions areThe directed cycle has equal traffic weights; choosing each weight to be gives the unnormalized product-form stationary distribution of a closed migration processWe can verify global balance for a continuous-time Markov chain directly. Weighted incoming transitions from , and contribute, respectively,Their sum equals the weight times the outgoing rate. This proves stationarity after normalization, without falsely asserting reversibility of the directed migration cycle.
For occupied lines, summing over the automated population givesThe normalizing constant is . The attempted calls form an independent Poisson process, so Poisson arrivals see time averages: the rate of attempted arrivals seeing a full state is times its stationary probability, and division by the total attempted-arrival rate gives the loss proportion. ConsequentlyThe numerator is essential; the PDF contains it even though the converted TeX loses it.
With two independent operators, the total check-completion rate is . In particular it is only when one caller is present. DefineThe human-stage weight becomes , while the free and automated weights are unchanged. The same global-balance calculation applies using these departure rates. ThusThis is the blocking probability in a finite-line sequential-service network with two operators. It remains valid for , when every attempted call is lost; for it coincides with the single-operator answer.
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