Consider the problem of adding two \(n \times n\) matrices. If it takes \(t_{\alpha}\) time for one person to add two numbers, how many people do we need to minimize the total time spent to get the final answer? What will be the minimum amount of time needed to find the answer if we have enough people? Justify your answers.

Short Answer

Expert verified
The number of people needed to minimize the total time spent to get the final answer is \(n^2\) and the minimum amount of time needed to find the answer if we have enough people would be \(t_{\alpha}\)

Step by step solution

01

Determine the number of tasks

First, we need to identify how many tasks we have. Given a matrix size of \(n \times n\), when we add two matrices of this size, there will be \(n \times n = n^2\) cells or numbers to be added. So, there are \(n^2\) tasks.
02

Finding the number of people needed

Since every individual task can be done in parallel without waiting for any other task, the best way to minimize time is to do as many tasks in parallel as possible. That means we aim to get every cell added at the same time. So for adding \(n^2\) cells, if we allow one person to add one pair of numbers, we would need \(n^2\) people.
03

Calculating the minimal time needed

If each person can add a pair of numbers in \(t_{\alpha}\) time and all the people can work at the same time, the total time spent would be just the time a person takes to add a single pair of numbers, which is \(t_{\alpha}\). Therefore, if we have \(n^2\) people, the total time needed to complete the task would be minimized to \(t_{\alpha}\).

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