In a time of ‘social’ (i.e. physical) distancing, frustration with the inefficiency of a typical serial scheme (one-dimensional queueing) relative to a parallel scheme (arrays) threatens to tip over into disorder. Now’s the perfect time to reconsider the prejudices that govern aircraft boarding, for example. Several years ago, Jason Steffen showed that both a parallelised scheme, and a ‘free-for-all’ scramble, were more efficient than the standard row-by-row approach. In a broader context, the ‘free-for-all’ approach is perhaps optimistic, though politically convenient for a government that wants to wash its hands of all responsibility – but parallelism is worth investigating…
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