Incorrect Average Wait Time Statistic
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Yoon Ha H
If you go to the 1:1 Live Help page, it displays that there are around 900 tutors online which gives a wait time of 5 minutes. This is false; almost half the questions go unanswered (there are good reasons for this, such as vague requests, though), and none of these actually receive an answer in 5 minutes. I assume this isn't based on actual data but a rather simple algorithm such as 5000 / number of tutors rounded to the nearest 5 minutes, given the fact that it always displays a low number when there are many tutors and high numbers when there are few. The trouble is that this is an overestimate, "online tutors" doesn't mean "tutors willing to give a response". For example, a tutor can be online but they are hosting their sessions and are unable to help in the 1:1 Live Help page. These people should not be factored into the calculation of "number of tutors available" (which I know for a fact that they are a majority). Please don't give them false hope by over-reporting the actual number of tutors that can currently answer questions in 1:1 Live Help. As an alternative, base your calculations of average wait time based on the time it takes for questions to receive an answer, which would be more accurate.
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Adriana Gutierrez
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Adriana Gutierrez
Hi, Yoon Ha H! Adriana from engineering here.
It is the average wait time across all subjects. There are lots of ways we could try to calculate that, but we look at a window of time and calculate it based on all the requests in all subjects during that time.
When a user selects a subject we also show a subject-specific wait time for getting Zoom help — which is generally longer than the time it gets to get a text response.
It’s not going to be perfect and will depend on the subject, but it is based on actual activity, not the number of tutors online.
Yoon Ha H
This is not to say that the website always has slow responses, but 5 minutes is an unrealistic calculation and it might give learners a sense of betrayal when the responses come way after 5 minutes