A Bracket is a Queue

Increase Your Effectiveness with Villanova’s Lean Training – 100% Online!

We’re accustomed to viewing queues as serial lines, or people waiting to be served.  But, not much thought is given to the shapes of queues.

Well, a Bracket is a type of Queue.

In general, a queue is a line of people or things waiting to be handled, sometimes in sequential order starting at the beginning or top of the line or sequence. More generally, a queue is a sequence of work objects that are waiting to be processed. The possible factors, arrangements, and processes related to queues is what we know as queueing theory.

A Bracket is different type of queue – one that actually hasn’t been considered as part of queueing theory.  Instead, games that can be described in a bracket shape are typically studied under decision trees or in general decision science classes; sometime probability, such as markov walks; or in optimization schemes.

But, a bracket is a queue.  It’s an interesting shape for a queue.

And, I’ve already lost my NCAA picks for 2010.  I picked Kentucky would win the whole thing against Kansas.  Oh well, I’ll have to wait until next year ¹.

	This post was written by Pete Abilla