At the End of Each Month, a Research and Development

question 29

Essay

At the end of each month, a research and development team writes status reports for the projects worked on during the month. The team leaders, Andrew and Julie, submit the reports to the R&D director on the first Monday of each month. It is late Friday evening and to their surprise, they have discovered that the month ends on Sunday and the reports are due on Monday morning. They have decided to come to work early Saturday morning, so they can finish the reports before Monday morning. They split the work as follows: Andrew will write and edit the reports while Julie collates data and draws all the necessary graphs. Assume that Julie starts her work on a report as soon as Andrew is finished with it and that Andrew works continuously. Times for the reports in hours) are as follows:
$$\begin{array} { c c c } \text { Projects } & \text { Andrew } & \text { Julie } \\\text { A } & 4 & 2 \\\text { B } & 3 & 5 \\\text { C } & 5 & 1 \\\text { D } & 7 & 3 \\\text { E } & 8 & 6\end{array}$$
a. What is the order of the projects using Johnson's rule?
b. How many hours will it take them to finish all the reports?
c. How many hours is Andrew idle?
d. How many hours is Julie idle?

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Definitions:

Parallel Distributed Processing

A computational approach in cognitive science that models mental processes as occurring across networks of simple units working in parallel, simulating how information is processed in the brain.

Connectionist Model

A cognitive model based on the concept that mental phenomena can be described by interconnected networks of simple units.

Interaction Model

A conceptual framework that describes how entities (such as individuals, groups, or systems) influence each other within a process or context.

Implicit Memory

A type of memory that enables people to perform tasks without conscious awareness of these previous experiences.