Is AnyLogic's arrival rate a Poisson distribution?

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I am trying to understand the best practices regarding AnyLogic's source arrival rates. I know that Exponential and Poisson are two different probability distributions. When using "Arrival Rate" in AnyLogic and choosing a rate of 10/hour for example, does this generate 10 agents per hour exponentially or according to a Poisson distribution or is it the same thing?

I really need guidance on understanding the best practices in this matter. To simplify the question, if I have an arrival rate of 10/hour following a Poisson distribution, what is the right way to model that in AnyLogic?

Many thanks!

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anylogic

1 Answers

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In any source in AnyLogic, if you choose a rate, it will automatically be poisson where your rate will be the lambda parameter of your poisson distribution... this means that in average you will get lambda agents per time unit generated

The exponential distribution is equivalent to the poisson distribution, except that it takes into consideration the time between each arrival instead. (this means that you need to use arrivals defined by inter-arrival time in your source, otherwise it wouldn't make much sense)

poisson(lambda) arrivals per time unit is equivalent to exponential(lambda) time units per arrival, it doesn't really matter which one you use