Winning the Hand of the Princess Saralinda

Suitors come to the castle in order to try to win the hand of the Princess Saralinda. The first suitor to perform n amazing feats will succeed. If the number n of feats is large and the times to perform the feats are all i.i.d., then how long is it before a suitor will win the hand of the Princess? We develop asymptotics describing the distribution of this random time as the number of feats gets large; e.g., we show that this time is of order n m - s sqrt(n log(n)), where m and s are the mean and standard deviation of the time to perform a single feat.
(http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/431343.html)

Truly, an excellent first paragraph.

Queueing theory has always confused me.

If I understand correctly, it is entirely possible to perform Monte Carlo simulations of the queueing scenario and obtain this result empirically. Possibly it was first obtained empirically. However, the body of the paper contains no reference to any simulations, and derives the result entirely analytically. Which is impressive, no doubt, but I worry that there might be a disproportionate emphasis within mathematical culture on analytical results.

The nightmare scenario is when mathematics becomes a field like athletics, where the participating requires (and demonstrates) enormous talents, the participants undergo fantastic gyrations, and the end results are of no particular value.