How am I just learning this now?

[hani]

Here is how hopeless I am with ratios and all that.

How to solve a COMBINED WORK PROBLEM

In a combined work problem, you are given the rate at which people are machines perform work individually and asked to compute the rate at which they work together (or vice versa). The work formula states: The inverse of the time it would take everyone

Comments

[phantomtantrum]

I am still lost! haha

[hani]

Heh!

[kn0tme]

I never gave it much thought, but I always figured it'd be the average of the 2 times. But now that I think about it, that can't be (how can it take longer with 2 people than it would with the faster person working by him/herself)? So thinking about it, it makes all the sense in the world to me that it is the average of the inverse.

[hani]

I'm confused about this part:
"but I always figured it'd be the average of the 2 times. But now that I think about it, that can't be (how can it take longer with 2 people than it would with the faster person working by him/herself)"

Well, if you had person A paint 4 walls/hr and person B paint 5 walls/hr, and you thought it was the average of those two times, it would be 4.5 walls/hr. That...isn't longer than the faster person working by him/herself. That's slower...

And the formula doesn't involve averages, anyway...