Question

A professor holds office hours during final exam week and discovers much to his dismay that his sudden popularity affords him little time to engage in his favorite activity, watching cat videos. Fifteen students per hour arrive at his office and he patiently answers questions, averaging three minutes per student. On average, how many students are waiting to ask questions?

Answer 1

On average, there are 0 students waiting to ask questions.

Step-by-step explanation:

To calculate the average number of students waiting to ask questions, we need to determine the rate at which students arrive and the time it takes to answer each student. The professor's popularity is causing 15 students to arrive per hour. Since the professor takes an average of 3 minutes to answer each student, the professor can answer 20 students per hour. This means that there are an average of 15 - 20 = -5 students waiting to ask questions per hour. However, a negative number of students waiting does not make sense in this context, so we can conclude that there are on average 0 students waiting to ask questions.