# very simple logic question

#### noetsi

##### Fortran must die

I have been asked for the average time customers spent in a given service.

Some customers are in the service multiple times. They way I have calculated the response to the question, is the total time in services divided by the number of times the service is taken. This is really the average time the service takes.

Should I instead sum up the time each customer has gone through services (this will add up the multiple service times for those customers who have multiple services and connect it to a specific customer) and divide the sum of this by the number of customers?

Been working to much recently....this is probably too simple a question to even think about.

#### hlsmith

##### Omega Contributor
Are subsequent times indepenent? Or does the length of time change based on the number of times? Do people with multiple times differ from those with fewer?

If I go to H&R block two years in a row for my taxes, it is likely the second time is faster since I am familiar with the process and they already have data loaded into the system

#### Dragan

##### Super Moderator

I have been asked for the average time customers spent in a given service.

Some customers are in the service multiple times. They way I have calculated the response to the question, is the total time in services divided by the number of times the service is taken. This is really the average time the service takes.

Should I instead sum up the time each customer has gone through services (this will add up the multiple service times for those customers who have multiple services and connect it to a specific customer) and divide the sum of this by the number of customers?

Been working to much recently....this is probably too simple a question to even think about.

I suspect that you should compute a weighted average; which is based on what you intimated in Part 3 of your first post.

#### hlsmith

##### Omega Contributor
Is time value normally distributed?

May think about something like this if time variabe may be dependent on person:

Code:
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#### noetsi

##### Fortran must die
I am not sure whether the times are independent or not in honesty. They go to different vendors and different training so effectively one training probably has no impact on the time of the next training.

I wanted to thank hlsmith and dragan for their comments. As is often the case the decision was administrative rather than logic based. They asked us for the simplest answer, we gave them average time in service which was quickest to compute. But I learned from this thread which will help in the future.