Jolt – K
The soda machine outside the lecture hall sees a steady stream of customers throughout
the day. The machine takes 4 seconds to deliver a can of carbonated sugar water once
the button is pressed and students generally know what they want from the machine –
the average feeding of the machine takes two seconds. Over the course of a twelve hour
lecture day, students arrive at the rate of 500 per hour.
How many minutes out of each hour is the soda machine not serving a customer?
A) 16
B) 15
C) 12
D) 10
Which of the following assumptions is not an assumption of the transportation model?
A) Shipping costs per unit are constant.
B) There is one transportation route between each source and destination.
C) There is one transportation mode between each source and destination.
D) Actual total supply and actual total demand must be equal.
Decision support systems and sensitivity analysis are useful management science tools
for answering the question:
A) by when?
B) who else?
C) how much?
D) what if?
Napoleon is contemplating four institutions of higher learning as options for a Masters
in Business Administration. Each university has strong and weak points and the demand
for MBA graduates is uncertain. The availability of jobs, student loans, and financial
support will have a significant impact on Napoleon’s ultimate decision. Vanderbilt and
Seattle University have comparatively high tuition, which would necessitate Napoleon
take out student loans resulting in possibly substantial student loan debt. In a tight
market, degrees with that cachet might spell the difference between a hefty paycheck
and a piddling unemployment check. Northeastern State University and Texas Tech
University hold the advantage of comparatively low tuition but a more regional appeal
in a tight job market. Napoleon gathers his advisory council of Kip and Pedro to assist
with the decision. Together they forecast three possible scenarios for the job market and
institutional success and predict annual cash flows associated with an MBA from each
institution. All cash flows in the table are in thousands of dollars.
Under which criterion is Seattle University the optimal decision?
A) maximax
B) maximin
C) minimax regret
D) equally likely
The landlord ran the model in Excel and received the answer report contained in the
table. Which of the following statements is correct?
A) The rent will be $180 higher and the project will take 3.5 weeks to finish at a cost of
$2900.
B) The rent will be $195 higher and the project will take 2.5 weeks to finish at a cost of
$2900.
C) The rent will be $180 higher and the project will take 2.5 weeks to finish at a cost of
$3700.
D) The rent will be $195 higher and the project will take 3.5 weeks to finish at a cost of
$3700.
Cold & Calculating
The cold, calculating father did exactly that when examining the 27 year old failure to
launch man child that had turned his walk in closet into a bedroom. As he saw it, there
were five alternatives; each had its advantages and disadvantages, and under different
circumstances, each had a different financial incentive. He laid it all out neatly in a
table, but as not to arouse suspicion, he left the table’s labels very generic, so the
alternatives were simply labeled A through E while the different circumstances were
simply numbered one through three. He flicked the gray ash off of his favorite purple
smoking jacket and pondered the best course of action under each possible future. It
was good to be devious, he decided.
The ________ is a measure of the decision maker’s optimism.
A) equal likelihood criterion
B) dominant decision
C) coefficient of optimism
D) opportunity loss
Jolt – Exp
The soda machine outside the lecture hall sees a steady stream of customers throughout
the day. While the machine takes 4 seconds to deliver a can of carbonated sugar water
once the button is pressed, the student customers introduce variation into the delivery
process by pondering their selection for a while. Thus, we can safely say that the
service time is governed by a negative exponential probability distribution that averages
10 seconds. Over the course of a twelve hour lecture day, students arrive at the rate of
240 per hour, Poisson distributed of course. On average, how many students are
standing directly in front of the soda machine?
A) 2
B) 1.33
C) 0.67
D) 0.5
The Hurwicz criterion is a compromise:
A) between the maximin and minimax criteria.
B) between the minimax and maximax criteria.
C) between the maximax and maximin criteria.
D) none of the above
Zevon Enterprises
Zevon Enterprises provides services for clients worldwide and to protect all parties to
this course as well as Zevon, we shall refer to those services as X1, X2, and X3. Each of
these services has its own special mix of needs for the resources the company has at its
disposal. The X1 product requires three lawyers, seven guns, and $6,000; the X2
product requires two lawyers, five guns, and $4,000; and the X3 product requires four
lawyers, six guns, and $7,000. Zevon has access to 5,000 lawyers, 10,000 guns, and
$15,000,000. For ease of conversation, Zevon employees usually speak about dollars as
“per thousand” so one of them asking for $7 means that they really need $7,000.
Zevon’s demand is variable depending on what they charge for it. For example, the X1
product’s demand is 200 – 2.25p1. The demand for X2 is 300 – 3p2, and the demand for
X3 is 400 – 3.5p3. The per unit profit forX1 through X3 can be calculated by subtracting
the per unit cost from the sales price, so for X1, the profit is p1 – 25, for X2 the profit is
p2– 3, and for X3 the profit is p3– 3.5.
The model is entered in Excel and executes to reveal that p1 equals $45.57. Which of
these conclusions is correct?
A) The per unit profit for X1 is $45.57.
B) The contribution to net profit from service X1 is $4,441.59.
C) There is excess demand for service X1.
D) The demand for X1 is 97.
A business is trying to decide which restaurant to hold its annual awards banquet. Use
the information below to determine the best choice.
Restaurant
Where should the restaurant be located?
A) A
B) B
C) C
D) A and B equally preferred.
Use the following table and the information to answer the questions below.
In the following transportation matrix, all cells except 2C have been evaluated and
show no improvement. Evaluate that cell.
How many units would be allocated to cell 2C?
A) 10
B) 14
C) 6
D) 0
E) 20
The gentleman farmer kept chickens for the eggs, the splash of color in the yard, and
because he found their gentle clucking to relax him as he worked on his laptop on his
deck. Their movements around his yard gave meaning to the term random walk you
literally could not predict their location from one minute to the next. His collection of
birds is neatly summarized in this table.
A hen just joined him up on the deck; what is the probability it is a rooster?
A) 0.33
B) 0.10
C) 0.03
D) 0.00
EOQ is the optimal order quantity that will ________ total inventory costs.
A) maximize
B) minimize
C) steady
D) maintain
The branch and bound method is a solution approach that partitions the ________
solution space into smaller subsets of solutions.
A) infeasible
B) feasible
C) optimal
D) all of the above
Cold & Calculating
The cold, calculating father did exactly that when examining the 27 year old failure to
launch man child that had turned his walk in closet into a bedroom. As he saw it, there
were five alternatives; each had its advantages and disadvantages, and under different
circumstances, each had a different financial incentive. He laid it all out neatly in a
table, but as not to arouse suspicion, he left the table’s labels very generic, so the
alternatives were simply labeled A through E while the different circumstances were
simply numbered one through three. He flicked the gray ash off of his favorite purple
smoking jacket and pondered the best course of action under each possible future. It
was good to be devious, he decided.
The Hurwicz criterion:
A) multiplies the worst payoff by one minus the coefficient of optimism.
B) multiplies the best payoff by one minus the coefficient of optimism.
C) is a compromise between the minimax and maximin criteria.
D) all of the above
Zevon Enterprises
Zevon Enterprises provides services for clients worldwide and to protect all parties to
this course as well as Zevon, we shall refer to those services as X1, X2, and X3. Each of
these services has its own special mix of needs for the resources the company has at its
disposal. The X1 product requires three lawyers, seven guns, and $6,000; the X2
product requires two lawyers, five guns, and $4,000; and the X3 product requires four
lawyers, six guns, and $7,000. Zevon has access to 5,000 lawyers, 10,000 guns, and
$15,000,000. For ease of conversation, Zevon employees usually speak about dollars as
“per thousand” so one of them asking for $7 means that they really need $7,000.
Zevon’s demand is variable depending on what they charge for it. For example, the X1
product’s demand is 200 – 2.25p1. The demand for X2 is 300 – 3p2, and the demand for
X3 is 400 – 3.5p3. The per unit profit forX1 through X3 can be calculated by subtracting
the per unit cost from the sales price, so for X1, the profit is p1 – 25, for X2 the profit is
p2– 3, and for X3 the profit is p3– 3.5.
The analytics gurus at Zevon realize that they had misformulated their demand curves.
They now believe that demand for X1 is given by 1000 – 2.25p1, demand for X2 is
given by 2000 – 3p2, and demand for X3 is given by 3000 – 3.5p3. This model is entered
in Excel and the sensitivity report contains the following:
What is the best conclusion from the list below?
A) The profit for this scenario cannot be maximized.
B) Not all of the lawyers they have available will be used.
C) If Zevon can retain the services of another lawyer for less than $101, they should do so.
D) Lawyer jokes aside, Zevon cannot benefit from hiring additional lawyers at any cost.
The optimal solution of a minimization problem is at the extreme point ________ the
origin.
A) farthest from
B) closest to
C) exactly at
D) parallel to
Employees of a local company are classified according to gender and job type. The
following table summarizes the number of people in each job category.
Male (M) Female (F)
Job
Administrative (AD) 110 10
Salaried staff (SS) 30 50
Hourly staff (HS) 60 40
If an employee is selected at random, what is the probability that the employee is
female given that the employee is a salaried staff member?
A) .50
B) .60
C) .625
D) .70
The Taco Barn
After tallying the receipts for their first year of operation, the owners of the Taco Barn
are encouraged. Sales of their artisnal tacos, made from such exotic ingredients as
ground beef, cheese, and beans, have been strong and seem to give hope to the coming
year. Taco sales by month are shown in the table.
Armed only with his fingers, the owner decides that the safest forecasting approach is a
moving average of two periods. His fingers are aching by the time he reaches May and he
is worried about his ability to stuff tacos during tomorrow’s dinner rush. Help him out by
finding the forecast for June.
A) 583.5
B) 544.5
C) 626
D) 673
Classical optimization is the use of ________ to determine the optimal value of a
variable.
A) calculus
B) linear programming
C) nonlinear programming
D) goal programming
The Krewe of Orpheus
The Krewe of Orpheus maintains a supply of swizzle sticks for events throughout the
year. Demand for swizzle sticks is shockingly low, a quick check of krewe records from
last year reveals that they used only 585,000, but the krewe president believes that they
should be good stewards of what they have, so they seek to manage this inventory using
the EOQ policy, although they prefer to refer to it as an EOKrewe policy for obvious
reasons. Swizzle sticks are not expensive items, they cost a nickel apiece largely due to
the club logo printed on each one. This also serves to increase the lead time as they
can’t be obtained from a standard restaurant supply house. Instead, they must be ordered
with an eye towards the six day lead time. It costs $15 to place an order, most of this
cost is a result of explaining the meaning of “Laissez les bons temps rouler” and why it
should be printed on the edge of each swizzle stick. Holding cost is 20% of purchase
price.
What is their total inventory policy cost (excluding cost of goods) if they order at their
EOKrewe amount?
A) $936.75
B) $468.37
C) $418.93
D) $209.46
A product has demand during lead time of 100 units, with a standard deviation of 25
units. What safety stock provides (approximately) a 95% service level?
A) 41
B) 55
C) 95
D) 140
Jolt – Exp
The soda machine outside the lecture hall sees a steady stream of customers throughout
the day. While the machine takes 4 seconds to deliver a can of carbonated sugar water
once the button is pressed, the student customers introduce variation into the delivery
process by pondering their selection for a while. Thus, we can safely say that the
service time is governed by a negative exponential probability distribution that averages
10 seconds. Over the course of a twelve hour lecture day, students arrive at the rate of
240 per hour, Poisson distributed of course. Over the course of the twelve hour day,
how many hours is the soda machine not happily dispensing product?
A) 2
B) 4
C) 6
D) 8
A ________ probability is the altered marginal probability of an event based on
additional information.
A) posterior
B) joint
C) marginal
D) conditional
Project Sand Mandala
Carrie meticulously calculated the early and late start and finish times for her latest
project and recorded them using different colors of sand on a pristine slab of white
marble. She used red for late start and late finish times and green for early start and
early finish times. Activity durations and their identifiers were written with black sand.
She finished her task and had an opportunity to admire her work only briefly before a
colleague came by and swept most of it away. Sadly, this was before Carrie could
record the numbers on a more permanent medium, so now she turns to you to help.
What is the slack time for activity H?
A) 1
B) 2
C) 3
D) 4
Use the following table and the information to answer the questions below.
In the following transportation matrix, all cells except 2C have been evaluated and
show no improvement. Evaluate that cell.
Consider the following transportation tableau which shows the initial solution. Evaluate
the cost of allocating units to cell DR.
A) -5
B) -2
C) 0
D) 3
E) 5
Donuts Please
The number of donuts needed for department meetings at the start of the semester can
be modeled by the continuous probability distribution , which we can integrate
from 0 to some value x, which is the number of days before the actual beginning of the
semester.
________ is a technique for selecting numbers randomly from a probability
distribution.
A) Marseille
B) Monaco
C) Monte Carlo
D) Analogue simulation
A croissant shop produces two products: bear claws (B) and almond-filled croissants
(C). Each bear claw requires 6 ounces of flour, 1 ounce of yeast, and 2 TS of almond
paste. An almond-filled croissant requires 3 ounces of flour, 1 ounce of yeast, and 4 TS
of almond paste. The company has 6600 ounces of flour, 1400 ounces of yeast, and
4800 TS of almond paste available for today’s production run. Bear claw profits are 20
cents each, and almond-filled croissant profits are 30 cents each. What is the optimal
daily profit?
A) $380
B) $400
C) $420
D) $440
Operating characteristics for a waiting line system include:
A) queue discipline.
B) the Poisson distribution.
C) a waiting line structure.
D) utilization.
Rounding large values of decision variables to the nearest integer value causes
________ problems than rounding small values.
A) more
B) fewer
C) none of the above
After plowing through contracts for a decade, the contract writer knew about how long
it took to crank out the material necessary to satisfy a contract’s requirements. The
distribution could be modeled using the data provided in this table.
Using the random number table 14.3 in your text, column 1, reading across row 2, what
is the average length of the next five contracts?
A) 4.6
B) 4.8
C) 5.0
D) 5.2
Ruby owns a small cafe and uses a linen supplier for her tablecloths. Whenever she
needs more tablecloths, she calls the supplier. She uses an average of 12 tablecloths a
day with a standard deviation of 3 tablecloths. Lead time is a constant 2 days. If Ruby is
willing to accept a 5% stockout risk, what is the reorder point, rounded to the nearest
tablecloth? Assume demand is normally distributed.
A) 28
B) 31
C) 34
D) 42
A paint manufacturer’s production process is normally distributed with a mean of
100,000 gallons and a standard deviation of 10,000 gallons. Management wants to
create an incentive bonus for the production crew when the daily production exceeds
the 94th percentile of the distribution. At what level of production should management
pay the incentive bonus?
Napoleon is contemplating four institutions of higher learning as options for a Masters
in Business Administration. Each university has strong and weak points and the demand
for MBA graduates is uncertain. The availability of jobs, student loans, and financial
support will have a significant impact on Napoleon’s ultimate decision. Vanderbilt and
Seattle University have comparatively high tuition, which would necessitate Napoleon
take out student loans resulting in possibly substantial student loan debt. In a tight
market, degrees with that cachet might spell the difference between a hefty paycheck
and a piddling unemployment check. Northeastern State University and Texas Tech
University hold the advantage of comparatively low tuition but a more regional appeal
in a tight job market. Napoleon gathers his advisory council of Kip and Pedro to assist
with the decision. Together they forecast three possible scenarios for the job market and
institutional success and predict annual cash flows associated with an MBA from each
institution. All cash flows in the table are in thousands of dollars.
Napoleon doesn’t know what to think, since he has no idea which scenario will happen.
Which criterion is he well-suited for and what is his decision?
The drying rate in an industrial process is dependent on many factors and varies
according to the following distribution.
What is the average drying time if you simulate 10 trials using these random numbers:
13, 09, 0.19, 0.81, 0.12, 0.53, 0.95, 0.97, 0.96, and 0.07.
Recent past demand for product ZXT is given in the following table.
Determine the forecasted demand for April and May based on adjusted exponential
smoothing with α = .2, β = .3, a February forecast of 20, and T = 0.
________ demand items are used internally to produce a final product.
________ variables are best suited to be the decision variables when dealing with
yes-or-no decisions.
Employees of a local company are classified according to gender and job type. The
following table summarizes the number of people in each job category.
Job Male (M) Female (F)
Administrative (AD) 110 10
Salaried staff (SS) 30 50
Hourly staff (HS) 60 40
If an employee is selected at random, what is the probability that the employee is
female given that the employee is a salaried staff member?
Assume that X is a normally distributed random variable with a mean of 50 and a
standard deviation of 2. Find the probability that X is between 48 and 55.
The management scientist constructed a linear program to help the alchemist maximize
his gold production process. The computer model chugged away for a few minutes and
returned an outcome of infinite profit., which is what might be expected from a(n)
________ problem.
Consider the following network.
Assume that the variance for each activity in the network is equal to Compute the
probability that path A-B-E-F will be completed in 15 days.
Although information from Markov analysis can be obtained using a ________, it is
time-consuming and cumbersome.
The gentleman farmer kept chickens for the eggs, the splash of color in the yard, and
because he found their gentle clucking to relax him as he worked on his laptop on his
deck. Their movements around his yard gave meaning to the term random walk you
literally could not predict their location from one minute to the next. His collection of
birds is neatly summarized in this table.
What is the probability that the next chicken that joins him up on the deck is a rooster?
Given the following linear programming problem:
maximize Z = $100x1 + 80x2
subject to x1 + 2x2 ≤ 40
3x1 + x2 ≤ 60
x1, x2 ≥ 0
Using the simplex method, what is the optimal value for X1?
Consider the following integer linear programming problem:
Max Z = 3x1 + 2x2
Subject to: 3x1 + 5x2 ≤ 30
5x1 + 2x2 ≤ 28
x1 ≤ 8
x1, x2 ≥ 0 and integer
The solution to the linear programming formulation is: x1 = 5.714, x2 = 2.571.
What is the optimal solution to the integer linear programming problem?
State the optimal values of decision variables and the value of the objective function.
Yowzah Bids
Yowzah receives bids from four companies we’ll call A, B, C, and D to supply product
for the coming year. Renee DeCartes, the Yowzah VP of Plotting takes the bids and
creates this graph to bring to the next executive meeting.
What is the point of indifference between company A and company C? How does this
point of indifference affect Yowzah’s decision?
SS 1 2
1 100 5 6
2 200 4 2
3 150 3 6
4 50 9 7
DD 250 250
What are the supply-side constraints?
A company markets educational software products, and is ready to place three new
products on the market. Past experience has shown that for this particular software, the
chance of ‘success” is 80%. Assume that the probability of success is independent for
each product.
Find the probability that none of the 3 products is successful.
You have been asked to select at least 3 out of 7 possible sites for oil exploration.
Designate each site as S1, S2, S3, S4, S5, S6, and S7. The restrictions are:
Restriction Evaluating sites S1and S3 will prevent you from exploring site S7.
Restriction Evaluating sites S2or S4 will prevent you from assessing site S5.
Restriction Of all the sites, at least 3 should be assessed.
Assuming that Si is a binary variable, write the constraint for the first restriction.