Suppose that Maria wins a $7 million lottery and is trying to decide whether to take $2 million all at once or $7 million over 20 years. One bit of information Maria would need to know is what the prevailing will be over the next 20 years.

You invest all the money you earned during your summer sales job (a total of $45,000) into the stock of a company that produces fat and carb-free cheetos. the company stock is expected to earn a 14% annual return; however, 5 years later it is only worth $20,000. turns out there wasn't as much demand for fat and carb-free cheetos as you had hoped. what is the annual rate of return on your investment?

Who is better at multi-tasking? in business, employees are often asked to perform a complex task when their atten-tion is divided (i. e., multi-tasking). human factors (may 2014) published a study designed to determine whether video game players are better than non–video game play-ers at multi-tasking. each in a sample of 60 college stu-dents was classified as a video game player or a non-player. participants entered a street crossing simulator and were asked to cross a busy street at an unsigned intersec-tion. the simulator was designed to have cars traveling at various high rates of speed in both directions. during the crossing, the students also performed a memory task as a distraction. two variables were measured for each student: (1) a street crossing performance score (measured out of 100 points) and (2) a memory task score (measured out of 20 points). the researchers found no differences in either the street crossing performance or memory task score of video game players and non-gamers. “these results,” say the researchers, “suggest that action video game players [and non-gamers] are equally susceptible to the costs of dividing attention in a complex task”

Aquatic marine stores company manufactures special metallic materials and decorative fittings for luxury yachts that require highly skilled labor. aquatic uses standard costs to prepare its flexible budget. for the first quarter of the year, direct materials and direct labor standards for one of their popular products were as follows: direct materials: 3 pounds per unit; $ 6 per pound direct labor: 4 hours per unit; $ 19 per hour during the first quarter, aquatic produced 5 comma 000 units of this product. actual direct materials and direct labor costs were $ 65 comma 000 and $ 330 comma 000, respectively. for the purpose of preparing the flexible budget, calculate the total standard direct materials cost at a production volume of 5 comma 000 units.