Limbering Up!

1.  Decisions, decisions

You want to hire a firm to help recruit volunteers for an important community initiative across your state.  You have a total budget in your organization of $500 to hire the firm.  You need a the best return rate you can get.

You can hire one firm that charges $495 for this service and has an average return rate of 30%.

Or you can go into your reserves and spend $595 to get a company that has an average return rate of 40%.

What do you do? 

• How do you make this decision and what factors do you weigh?

2.  You have a machine that can sort so many pounds of mail per hour, but it varies by the temperature.  Here is what you have observed.

You just found out that the heat is out in your building and that the temperature is probably going to be 46 degrees.  How many pounds of mail will your machine be able to sort?

• You can get an exact answer—How?
• Pictures and numbers… how will they help you here?