Calculus Problem:Please help

[Lillitheiss]

A contractor is appointed to paint a house. He wants to keep his labour costs as low as possible. It costs R200 for each painter (x) and a further R20/hour for each painter. He has determined that it would take one person 100 hours to finish the work alone. Presume it is going to take (y) hours to complete the job and that all painters are equally efficient.


The contractor decides (without any calculations) that the best would be to appoint three painters. What will his total labour cost be?

 

[Deleted member 4993]

A contractor is appointed to paint a house. He wants to keep his labour costs as low as possible. It costs R200 for each painter (x) and a further R20/hour for each painter. He has determined that it would take one person 100 hours to finish the work alone. Presume it is going to take (y) hours to complete the job and that all painters are equally efficient.


The contractor decides (without any calculations) that the best would be to appoint three painters. What will his total labour cost be?

I do not see any chance (reason) to use calculus for this problem. What are your thoughts?

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[stapel]

A contractor is appointed to paint a house. He wants to keep his labour costs as low as possible. It costs R200 for each painter (x) and a further R20/hour for each painter. He has determined that it would take one person 100 hours to finish the work alone. Presume it is going to take (y) hours to complete the job and that all painters are equally efficient.

The contractor decides (without any calculations) that the best would be to appoint three painters. What will his total labour cost be?

I agree with the previous reply: I see no way to apply calculus to this exercise. So about about using what you learned back in pre-algebra?

You know that it takes 100 man-hours to complete the job. How many clock-hours will be required, once the 100 man-hours are split between three men?

Given that number of hours, what is the total hourly cost?

You know there's a fixed R200 per-man cost. Given that there are three guys, what is the fixed cost?

What then is the total cost?