Kolkata restaurant problem as a generalised el farol bar problem

Abstract

Generalisation of the El Farol bar problem to that of many bars here leads to the Kolkata restaurant problem, where the decision to go to any restaurant or not is much simpler (depending on the previous experience of course, as in the El Farol bar problem). This generalised problem can be exactly analysed in some limiting cases discussed here. The fluctuation in the restaurant service can be shown to have precisely an inverse cubic behavior, as widely seen in the stock market fluctuations.