Question

Marci spends 8 hours researching and writing a 26​-page report for her philosophy class. Jack brags that he has a​ "streamlined process" for performing the researching and writing. Jack takes just 20 hours to research and write the​ paper, but his report is only 26 pages long.

Answer 1

Answer:

Productivity is measured by the amount of output per unit of input.

In this case, the inputs will be the hours spent doing research and writing their essays. Output will equal the amount of pages written.

Marci spent 8 hours and wrote a 26 page long report, so her productivity = 26 pages / 8 hours = 3.25 pages per hour

Jack spent 20 hours and wrote a 26 page long report, so his productivity = 26 pages / 20 hours = 1.3 pages per hour

Marci is much more productive in terms of hours spent doing and writing, and how long the report is.

The problem with this type of analysis is that we do not know if Marci's report was good or bad, and the same applies to Jack's. Since we do not know what grade they got, we cannot be sure how effective their work was.