Lack of port facilities or shallow water may require cargo on a large ship to be transferred to a pier using smaller craft. This process may require the smaller craft to cycle back and forth from ship to shore many times.

Researchers G. Horne (Center for Naval Analysis) and T. Irony (George Washington University) developed models of this transfer process that provide estimates of ship-to-shore transfer times (Naval Research Logistics, Vol. 41, 1994). They modeled the time between arrivals of the smaller craft at the pier using an exponential distribution.

a. Assume the mean time between arrivals at the pier is 17 minutes. Give the value of A for this exponential distribution. Graph the distribution.

b. Suppose there is only one unloading zone at the pier available for the small craft to use. If the first craft docks at 10:OO A.M. and doesn't finish unloading until 10:15 A.M., what is the probability that the second craft will arrive at the unloading zone and have to wait before docking?