> Isn't there the assumption in this article that tasks will come in faster than one person can deal with them
Yes this is an assumption. This isn't important though - you use a queue when you think tasks will have some level of build-up anyway i.e. the chance of the task being above your processing speed is non-zero.
> Because two ppl working on tasks coming in will be able to respond in the minimal time, rather than them banking up
No - that's not what the article is suggesting at all. It's saying that when you have two workers, the relative probability that both workers are queued up at the same time, causes the loss of the quadratic relationship between latency and N (see formula at the end).
EDIT:
Clarification on the first part. It is not that they will come in faster than the processing speed, but they that they can.
Yes this is an assumption. This isn't important though - you use a queue when you think tasks will have some level of build-up anyway i.e. the chance of the task being above your processing speed is non-zero.
> Because two ppl working on tasks coming in will be able to respond in the minimal time, rather than them banking up
No - that's not what the article is suggesting at all. It's saying that when you have two workers, the relative probability that both workers are queued up at the same time, causes the loss of the quadratic relationship between latency and N (see formula at the end).
EDIT:
Clarification on the first part. It is not that they will come in faster than the processing speed, but they that they can.