Gary and Diane must prepare a presentation for their marketing class. As part of their presentation, they must do a series of calculations and prepare 50 PowerPoint slides. It would take Gary 10 hours to do the required calculation and 10 hours to prepare the slides. It would take Diane 12 hours to do the calculations and 20 hours to prepare the slides

a. How much time would it take the two to complete the project if they divide the calculations equally and the slides equally?
b. How much time would it take the two to complete the project if they use comparative advantage and specialize in calculating or preparing slides?
c. If Diane and Gary have the same opportunity cost of $5 per hour, is there a better solution than for each to specialize in calculating or preparing slides?

a. If both tasks are divided equally, it will take 11 hours for the calculations and 15 hours for the writing, for a total of 26 hours.
b. If Diane specializes in calculating and Gary specializes in preparing slides, it will take 22 hours to complete the project.
c. If Diane specializes in calculating, her opportunity cost will be $60; hence, Diane would be better off if she paid Gary any amount less than $60 to do the calculating. Since Gary's opportunity cost of doing the calculations is only $50, he would be better off if Diane paid him between $50 and $60 dollars to do the calculations. In this case, the total time spent on the project would be 20 hours.