Naima van Tyn

Precalculus
Meadows and Malls: Writeup and Reflection

Write Up:
The problem “Meadows and Malls” is centered around a real world problem concerning land
allocation in Durango, Colorado. The city was given three parcels of land to develop either for
recreational use or development: 150 acres of land from the Boston Mining Company, 100 acres
from The Old Fort army base, and 300 acres from Dalton Ranch. This leaves a total 550 acres of
land for the city to use. As a consultant, it was my job to find the best way to split up the land so
that there was minimal cost to the city while also satisfying all interested parties.

I. To begin solving this problem to find the best way to split up the land, I had to do a couple
things. The first was to record all of my variables I would use throughout the problem. The
variables I decided to use were:

- Ranch land used for Recreation ⟶ RR

- Ranch land used for Development ⟶ RD
- Army land used for Recreation ⟶ AR
- Army land used for Development ⟶ AD
- Mining land used for Recreation ⟶ MR
- Mining land used for Development ⟶ MD

II. Second, I created and recorded a cost equation that I would use at the end of the process to
calculate the cost of my plan. The city had found that there was a specific cost to develop each
parcel of land for recreation and development. This was based off of the information that it takes
$50 per acre to develop Ranch land for recreation, $500 per acre to develop Ranch land for
development, etc. The equation that I came up with was:

50𝑅𝑅+ 500𝑅𝐷+ 200𝐴𝑅+ 2000𝐴𝐷+ 100𝑀𝑅+ 1000𝑀𝐷= Total Cost

III. Next, I looked at all of the requirements that the city outlined and put them into constraints
so that I could approach this problem as a linear programming problem. I based my constraints
off of the requirements outlined in the problem. The first constraint shows that there is a total of
300 acres of Dalton Ranch land available for use, the second shows there is a total of 100 acres
of army land available for use, and the third shows there is 150 acres of army land available for
use. The fourth constraint shows that development required at least 300 acres total, split between
the ranch, army, and mine land. The fifth constraint says that there can at most 200 acres of both
army and mine land used for recreation. The sixth constraint illustrates that the sum of army land
used for recreation and ranch land used for development must be exactly 100 acres. Finally, the
last 6 constraints are positivity constraints, showing that you cannot allot a negative amount of
land to either recreation or development. Here are the constraints that I came up with:
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Precalculus

1. RR + RD = 300 7. RR ≥ 0
2. AR + A D = 100 8. AR ≥ 0
3. MR + MD = 150 9. MR ≥ 0
4. RD + A D + MD ≥ 300 10. RD ≥ 0
5. AR + MR ≤ 200 11. AD ≥ 0
6. AR + RD = 100 12. MD ≥ 0

Once I had constraints, I had to figure out all the different possible solutions to this problem
when approached through systems of linear equations. This took a few steps:

IV. To begin this process, I first had to solve for every possible combination of the 12 constraints
in groups of six. However, I realized that I could decrease the number of combinations I had to
solve. This is because constraints (1),(2),(3)&(6) all have to be met precisely because they are
equals. That means these four constraints had to be included in every combination in order to
find solutions that would actually satisfy them. On top of this, I was able to eliminate positivity
constraints (7),(10)&(11) because they were implied by some of the other constraints. For
example, constraint (7)𝑅𝑅≥0 is already implied through constraints (6) and (1). If you take
constraint (6) 𝐴𝑅+𝑅𝐷= 100, you know that 𝑅𝐷 is at most equal to 100. If you then plug that into
(1) 𝑅𝑅+𝑅𝐷= 300, you know that, since 𝑅𝐷is no more than 100,𝑅𝑅must be at least 200 in order to
fulfill constraint (1). I used similar logic to eliminate constraints (10) and (11). I was then able to
ignore these for the rest of the problem. This allowed for me to decrease the number of sextuples
of linear equations that I had to solve. The list of combinations I had to solve were:

a. 1,2,3,6,4,5 f. 1,2,3,6,5,9
b. 1,2,3,6,4,8 g. 1,2,3,6,5,12
c. 1,2,3,6,4,9 h. 1,2,3,6,8,9
d. 1,2,3,6,4,12 i. 1,2,3,6,8,12
e. 1,2,3,6,5,8 j. 1,2,3,6,9,12

V. The next step is to plug all of these combinations of constraints into matrices in order to solve
for every variable. These combinations are in groups of six because we are solving for the six
constraints (𝑅𝑅thru 𝑀𝐷). For each matrice, I first finished all of the equations by putting zeros for
every variable that isn't explicitly in the equations. For example, for combination a constraint 1, I
wrote the equation RR + RD = 300 as 1RR + 1RD + 0AR + 0AD+0MR + 0MD = 300 so that every
variable was accounted for in the equation. For the rest of combination a, I wrote constraints
(2),(3),(4),(6),(4)&(5) like this as well. One important thing that I realized while writing these
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Precalculus
out is that, since constraints (1),(2),(3)&(6) are in every combination, I should use those as the
top four rows of the matrix and then for every combination simply change the last two. Knowing
this, I then plugged all of my constraints for combination a into a 6x6 matrix with the columns
representing variables and the rows representing each constraint. This is the matrix I got for
combination a:
RR RD → MD
[1 1 0 0 0 0] Constraint 1
[0 0 1 1 0 0] Constraint 2
[0 0 0 0 1 1] Constraint 3
[0 1 1 0 0 0] Constraint 6
[0 0 0 0 0 0] Constraint 4
[0 0 0 0 0 0] Constraint 5

After this, I had to create the second column matrix with the sums of each of the equations so
that I could multiply the matrices and find the solution. The second matrix I got was:
[300]
[100]
[150]
[100] *This corresponds to constraint #6 not #4*
[300]
[200]

VI. Next, I solved the matrix multiplication. I did this by plugging both the coefficient matrix
and the sum matrix into an online calculator which automatically multiplies the first matrix by its
inverse and then multiplies it by the second matrix which gives you the values for each of the six
variables of the equation. For combination a, the final matrix I got was:
[ 50 ] = 𝑅𝑅
[250 ] = 𝑅𝐷
[-150] = 𝐴𝑅
[250 ] = 𝐴𝐷
[350 ] = 𝑀𝑅
[-200] = 𝑀𝐷

This was one of the 10 possible solutions to the problem where each of the numbers represents
the number of acres allocated to that specific type of development. To find the remaining nine
solutions I repeated steps V and VI for the combinations b thru j. This gave me 10 different
solutions to work with:
Naima van Tyn
Precalculus
 Naima van Tyn
Precalculus

VII. The next step was to check each of the ten solutions against the original constraints to see
which solutions fit all of them. This means plugging every value for each solution into every
constraint to see if they met them. Immediately, it was clear that combination a was not viable
because it had negative numbers. Any solution is not able to have negative numbers because that
violates the positivity constraints, plus the city cannot allocate negative amounts of land to either
recreation or development. Knowing this, I did not have to continue to check them against the
constraints and moved on. For other combinations, it was harder to tell outright if they failed the
constraints, but I plugged each solution into the constraints. In order to have a viable solution, it
had to fit every single constraint. For example, combination b had the solution: 𝑅𝑅= 200, 𝑅𝐷=
100, 𝐴𝑅= 0, 𝐴𝐷= 100, 𝑀𝑅= 50, 𝑀𝐷= 100. When I plugged these into each constraint, it fit all.
For example, when I plugged 100 + 100 + 100 in to constraint 4 (RD + AD + MD ≥ 300) it fit
because 300 = 300. By going through this process for every combination, I finally found that
there were three possible solutions that satisfied all the constraints. The final solutions were
combinations b, c, & h.

VIII. The final step was to bring back what I did in step II and plug these three solutions into
the const equation. These are the three equations I came up with:

b. 50(200)+ 500(100)+ 200(0)+ 2000(100)+ 100(50)+ 1000(100)= $365,000

c. 50(225)+ 500(75)+ 200(25)+ 2000(75)+ 100(0)+ 1000(150)= $353,750
h. 50(200)+ 500(100)+ 200(0)+ 2000(100)+ 100(0)+ 1000(150)= $410,000

This showed me that combination h was the cheapest solution. This would mean that the city
gives 225 acres of Dalton Ranch land to recreation and 75 acres to development, 25 acres of
Old Fort land to recreation and 75 acres to development, 0 acres of Boston Mine land to
recreation and 150 acres to development. This gives a total of 300 acres for development and
250 acres for recreation, coming out to a total of $353,750 in costs to the city. This solution is the
best because it meets all land requirements while minimising the costs to the city.
 Naima van Tyn
Precalculus

Reflection:
1. What growth have you noticed so far during your junior year in your collaborative
skills, and how did these changes affect your ability to work with your group members?
Throughout this year, I have learned that I can collaborate with a lot of different types of
people but I work the best with others who are also able to take initiative and think outside the
box. I have noticed that I am usually a leader in collaborative groups, especially when my other
group members are a little more hesitant to take initiative for the group. However, as I work with
more people who are also very motivated, I have been able to let go of the leader role. This has
helped me see where I make mistakes and good strategies that others have to solve problems.
This has enabled me to create new strategies for solving problems as well as ways to collaborate
with people. I can adapt to situations where I am the leader, but also when someone else takes
the lead or we all collaborate equally.

2. How did your experience with remote and hybrid learning during this unit help you to
grow as a student and mathematician, and how did it affect your ability to be successful
in Precalculus and in completing this project.
I feel like I have learned how to adapt my schedule to better manage my time both online
and in person. In the beginning of this year and unit I had a really hard time fitting everything
into the time I had and the quality of my work declined as I fit too much into one hour. As I got
more used to online I learned how to manage my time better and this also allowed me to dive
more deeply into the content in my classes. In Precalculus, I have been able to follow the lessons
in class and take my time to complete the assignments fully. This has really helped me leading up
to this project because I was able to understand the core concepts of the unit and understand the
steps we took to get our final answer. I think that this is something that will prepare me well for
college because I will have to be able to schedule my time outside of class to get all of my work
done.

Report:
Here is the consulting report that my group and I made.