Dear Dr. Jones, Our pharmaceutical company now received 47 complaints about the new pain reliever
NoPain, created in your lab. Of the 47 complaints, 24 said their headache got worse, 15 said
they had severe cramping after taking the medication, and 8 said they had both problems.
We have only been distributing this pain reliever for about 30 days and we are very
concerned. It has cost our company roughly 1.2 million dollars to create the drug and we
have recorded sales of $98,600 in the past month at $10 a bottle, so that is 9,860 bottles.
Should we be concerned? Do you think we should pull the product and conduct more
research? We may end up losing money on this if we pursue this course of action. Should we
keep the product on the shelves and secretly do more research? Or should we just do
nothing for the time being, wait it out, and see what happens? Please get back to us as soon
as possible with your recommendation.
Thank you,
Jane Smith
Head of Customer Relations
I
Using your basic mathematical skills, calculate how long it will take the pharmaceutical
company to earn back the amount that it had invested, if it continues to sell the product at the
current selling rate.