Ed’s Research Estimate

Welcome! You are encouraged to register with the site and login (for free). When you register, you support the site and your question history is saved.

At his regular hourly rate, Ed had estimated the cost of a research task as $528 and he was paid that amount. However, the job took 8 hours less time than he had estimated and, consequently, he earned $11 per hour more than his regular hourly rate. What was the time Ed took to complete the task, in hours?

Review: Ed's Research Estimate


Explanation

We have friendly answer choices here, so we can try cases based on the answer choices. I'll start with (D), since it's easier to work with, and if I have to try (B) after (D), I should be able to infer the answer based on those two cases. If the task took 8 hours, then Ed had planned on 16 hours, that means that his normal rate must be



He ended up earning $11 more than planned per hour, so that would be . And , but that's supposed to add up to $528. So (D) is wrong. I would normally go to (B), but (D) was not that far off and (C) is going to be easier to compute, so let's try that. If the task took 16 hours, then the planned time was 24 hours, and Ed's rate is



Does Actually, yes; we already found that above. So (C) checks out.

The correct answer is (C).


If you believe you have found an error in this question or explanation, please contact us and include the question title or URL in your message.
Continue »