Question

Joselyn is a manager at a sign painting company. She has three painters, Allen, Brianne, and Charles. Allen can complete a large project in 16 hours. Brianne can complete the same sized project in 18 hours. Charles is new, so no one knows how long it will take him.

Joselyn assigns them all a large project to complete together. Explain to Joselyn how this project can tell her how long it would take Charles if he worked by himself. Use complete sentences.

Answer 1

im horrible at math i need help

Answer 2

@satellite73

Answer 3

@sarah1017

Answer 4

i really dont understand v.v

Answer 5

well if she knows how long it will take two out of the 3 people and if the work on the same project that would mean that she will have the avg # of hours it takes all 3 workers to do a large project....therefore if you set up a mean formula u would have only one variable to solve for which would be the # of hours it takes charles to do a project

Answer 6

how do you set the formula up?

Answer 7

does this make sense to you?

Answer 8

sorta so do u add the hours together....?

Answer 9

you know how to find the mean right?

Answer 10

no v.v

Answer 11

do u add 16 an 18 an divide by 3?

Answer 12

think about this way...if i took 4 hours to do something and it only took you 2 then if we both worked on it then we would take 3 hours since me and you are working on it together it would be the average of both our times...therefore (4+2) divided by 2 since there are only two people

Answer 13

no it is (C+16+18) all divided by 3 since there are 3 people and we want how much work would each person have done...if they had shared equal work hours

Answer 14

so 5 hours ?

Answer 15

the thing is that the problem doesn't say in how many hours the 3 people combined did the work...

Answer 16

that where im having issues :(

Answer 17

allens rate is 1/16 and brianne's is 1/18
if charles can do the work in t hours his rate is 1/t

Answer 18

see the thing is that they dont want you to solve it they just want you to give an explaination has to how you would go about and solve it

Answer 19

where did you get the rates from?

Answer 20

cause its says allen completed his project in 16 hours an brianna in 18 hours am i wrong?

Answer 21

yeah...see they dont want you to solve at all for Charles..they just want to know what you would do to see Charles work hours if the boss went and told the workers to go and finish a large project together...she had yet to tell them to do so...so you dont have that crucial info...

Answer 22

i really hate math v.v

Answer 23

if you understand the paragraph i wrote..use that cause thats what they want you to write

Answer 24

or just explain the equation i showed you

Answer 25

dont copy it word for word...make sure you understand what is going on before writing anything

Answer 26

ok but it still its confusing to me how to come up with how long it would take charles :(

Answer 27

once the boss lets all three work on the project you would have the avg time it took the workers to do the work

Answer 28

then the only variable left to solve would be C which is Charles work hours

Answer 29

so lets pretend all three work on it and they finish within 17 hours then all you need to do is plug 17 where it says avg # of hours it takes all 3 and solve for C