Just For You Ltd: Teachers Notes

Resources needed for lesson: Paper and pen, modelling packs

(consisting of three grids of equal size (each individual grid should be
printed on different coloured paper) please see attached student
template: one grid will represent the audience space; one grid can be cut
up as the students wish to represent the floor-level seating; one grid can
be cut up as the students wish to represent the raked seating), graph
paper, Students Excel Worksheet (attached), access to Excel Solver
Add-In.
Lesson plan length: approximately 1 hour and a half to 2 hours
(Please note: it is created so that it can easily be split into two 1 hour
lessons: the first session would be up to the graph work section and the
second part from the graph work section onwards)
Aimed at: A Level Students
Please note: The students worksheets may be distributed at the start of
the lesson. Tell students however that you will work through the questions
as a class. (This is because you will be asking them some additional
questions throughout.) The idea of having a students worksheet for the
whole lesson however is so that it allows students to progress if they finish
a certain activity quickly.
Introduction
(approximately 5 minutes)
Encourage the students to first discuss what may go into the costs of
designing and building the audience area for the venue (i.e. cost of raw
materials, insurance costs, cost of hiring the venue, staff wages), and
what is meant by profit and how this is calculated.
Discuss the benefits of modelling (i.e. planning what you are going to do)
and why this is important, e.g. if there are any problems, they can be
identified now so that time and money is saved as much as possible.
The design of the audience area is simplified for this project, but the idea
of it is to give the students an idea as to how we would run a project like
this in real life. We are also, for similar reasons, only considering the cost
of the raked seating and floor-level seating as a whole and the insurance
cost without considering staff wages etc.

Modelling
Question 1:
(approximately 15-20 minutes)
Ask the students to work in pairs or groups of 3, in order to think of the
best possible way to display their data and decide what the most logical
approach would be, to work out the different combinations. Give a
modelling pack to each pair/group of 3. Encourage the students to use
their modelling packs to be able to visualise the audience area and
experiment with the different combinations of seating choices possible by
cutting up two of the grids (each one representing a different type of seat)
into appropriate sizes. (For example, the floor-level seating needs to be of
size 0.5mx0.5m but there needs to be a 0.5m gap between each row, so
they may choose to cut up the grid such that the floor-level seating is of
size 1mx0.5m instead.)
Ask them to open up the Students version of Excel (attached). Tell them
to only focus on the columns: possibility, floor-level seating: amount
and raked seating: amount for now, and input the combinations they
have found. (Please note: tell the students that they can add more/delete
rows for the number of different possibilities as appropriate.)
Discuss the fact that there are many different combinations which involve
filling the whole capacity of the room, therefore encourage them to use
their knowledge of formulas to work out the remaining values quickly, by
inputting them into the appropriate cells in Excel.
Please highlight the fact that the students are only finding the
combinations of raked seating and floor-level seating which completely
fills the space.
Please see attachment 1 to know what their table should look like so far.
(Please note: this table has a few extra columns, of which answer question
2.)
Question 2 and 3:
(approximately 10-15 minutes)

Encourage the students to now consider the rest of the table and think of
appropriate formulas to input into the worksheet to fill in these remaining
columns.
Please see attachment 1 to know what their table should look like, as well
as the formulas they should use.

Question 4:
For this question, encourage students to look back over the work they
have done in their tables. They should then be able to use this to form an
inequality showing the greatest amount of rows of raked seating possible.
The greatest amount of rows of raked seating possible (calculated from
the table, in attachment 1) is 7 (i.e. 112 16 = 7, where 16 is the number
of people per row on raked seating). The inequality is therefore:

R<7
Question 5:
(Question 4 and 5: approximately 5 minutes)
Like in question 4, the students should refer to the table they created for
questions 1, 2 and 3. The greatest amount of rows of floor-level seating
possible is 7 (i.e. 224 32 = 7, where 32 is the number of people per row
on floor-level seating). The inequality is therefore:

F<=7

Question 6:
(approximately 5 minutes)
For this question, students need to think about the maximum capacity of
the hall (220) and also the constraints of which have been given by the
Floor-level seating can only
band, i.e. the seating must be organised into rows of 16 minimum.

be used in rows of 32. This

is because seating must be
Using
this of
information,
students should be able to form theRaked
inequality:
seating must
organised
into rows
16
be
organised
into
minimum. 16 chairs in floorrows of 16 minimum.
level seating takes up a
whole row of the venue,
therefore we need the
equivalent in floor-level
seating, which is 32, due to

32F + 16R <= 220

There is a maximum
capacity of 220
people in the venue.

Graph Work
Question 7 and 8:
(approximately 15 minutes)
In order to plot the inequalities on the graph, students must think of the
inequalities as equations. They should think about where the equations
cross the x-axis and y-axis, so that their graphs are drawn as accurately
as possible. The following tables could be used to assist calculations:
Constraint 1
F

Total

55

Total
7

Calculati
on
F=7

Total
7

Calculati
on
R=7

Calculations
32x0 + 16xR =
220
32xF + 16x0 =
220

R=
13.75
F=
6.875

Constraint 2

F
?
Constraint 3

R
?

Encourage students to use graph paper to draw their constraints on a

graph. Ask students to draw their lines beyond the points they have
plotted. They should use appropriate scales to use for their axes.
Students must then plot the points for the different combinations of raked
seating and floor-level seating found earlier (i.e. in order to fill the whole
room). Remind the students however that this was created without

knowing the room capacity (220 people), therefore they should only use
the points which meet this requirement.
Please see attachment 2 to see what the graph should look like.

Question 9:
(approximately 10-15 minutes)
Explain to the students that the optimal solution is found in each corner
of the feasible region (or very near to it, taking into consideration the
fact that we can only have integer values).
Encourage students to use a table to calculate the optimum solution at
each point.
Please see attachment 3 for this table.
Using this table, the total profit, from the optimal solution is hence
2320.00.
Modelling the Problem in Excel
Ask students to now look at the modelling the problem in Excel sheet of
their Excel workbook. For this, all students must be able to access
Solver. This is available for free as an add-in in Excel. To find this, for
Office 2012, follow the following steps:
File Options Add-Ins Select Solver add-In Click Go Tick
box for Solver add-in Click ok.
We can see in this worksheet that Solver finds an appropriate solution to
the problem. Use attachment 4 to explain each part of the model and the
inequalities incorporated into Solver to the students.
Ask students to see how well this relates to the results they calculated
earlier from their graphs. If there are differences, discuss why this may be
(i.e. handwritten errors in graphs, only approximate solutions with graphs,
errors in calculations).

Question 10:
(approximately 10 minutes)
Ask the students to now use what they have just learnt about Solver to
answer this question. The answer to this question simply involves
changing the value in the total capacity of the venue box. Ask students
to use the sheet in their workbook entitled copy of model 1 to show this.
Students should see that, by doing this, the number of people raked
seating and floor-level seating should change, resulting in the total profit
changing.
Please see attachment 5 to see this change.
Question 11:
(approximately 5-10 minutes)
Again, students should use their new knowledge of Solver to answer this
question.
For this question, students need to think of an appropriate formula to use
in order to calculate the number of people in floor-level seating, based on
the number of people in raked seating. Their answer will then affect the
constraints which are inputted into Solver, and the cells which Solver is
allowed to change. Ask students to use the sheet in their workbook
entitled copy of model 2 to show this.
Please see attachment 6 to see this change.
Real-Life Examples
(approximately 5 minutes)
Encourage students to now read the example given on their worksheet as
to how linear programming can be used in real life. Ask them if they can
think of any more examples where it could be used.
Evaluation
(approximately 5 minutes)
Ask students to now individually think about the questions given on the
worksheet. This will allow them to reflect on the work they have done.
There are no right or wrong answers; this part is purely the students own
opinion.