Here are a couple challenge problems that I think are fun to solve.
1. The percent return rate of a growth fund, income fund, and money market are 10%, 7%, and 5% respectively. Suppose you have 3200 to invest and you want to put twice as much in the growth fund as in the money market to maximize your return. How should you invest to get a return of 250 dollars in 1 year?
2. A cereal box manufacturer makes 32-ounce boxes of cereal. In a perfect world, the box will be 32-ounce every time is made. However, since the world is not perfect, they allow a difference of 0.06 ounce. Find the range of acceptable size for the cereal box.
3. The motherboards for a desktop computer can be manufactured for 50 dollars each. The development cost is 250000. The first 20 motherboard are samples and will not be sold. How many salable motherboards will yield an average cost of 6325 dollars?
4. Baking a tray of blueberry muffins takes 4 cups of milk and 3 cups of wheat flour. A tray of pumpkin muffins takes 2 cups of milk and 3 cups of wheat flour. A baker has 16 cups of milk and 15 cups of wheat flour. You make 3 dollars profit per tray of blueberry muffins and 2 dollars profit per tray of pumpkin muffins. How many trays of each type of muffins should you make to maximize profit?
5. Suppose you interview 30 females and 20 males at your school to find out who among them are using an electric toothbrush. Your survey revealed that only 2 males use an electric toothbrush while 6 females use it. What is the probability that a respondent did not use an electric toothbrush given that the respondent is a female?
