Week 1 — Pricing Choices on the Island Frontier — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Assignment 1 of the term — price a choice by its opportunity cost, read the island frontier, and explain the work to someone new to economics.

This week you learned what scarcity and opportunity cost are, how to read a production possibilities frontier and its slope, how to classify combinations on, inside, and outside it, how economists build models, and how to tell a positive statement from a normative one. In this assignment you work four short problems, interpret each one, and explain the work to someone who has never studied economics. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Model Workshop practice the same ideas from other angles.

The task

You will work with two things from this week, both illustrative and made up for this course. The first is the concert evening: a ticket that costs 60 dollars and 4 hours away from a shift that pays 15 dollars an hour. The second is the island frontier, written (fish, coconuts) per day: (0, 105), (10, 100), (20, 90), (30, 75), (40, 55), (50, 30), and (60, 0).

Work these four problems, showing every input and every arithmetic step on its own line:

1. A concert ticket costs 60 dollars, and going means 4 hours away from a shift that pays 15 dollars an hour, the best alternative. What is the opportunity cost of the concert evening, in dollars?
2. On the island frontier, the island moves from 40 fish and 55 coconuts to 50 fish and 30 coconuts. How many coconuts does each of those 10 extra fish cost?
3. At 30 fish the island frontier gives 75 coconuts. How many coconuts short of the frontier is the combination of 30 fish and 50 coconuts?
4. At 40 fish the island frontier gives 55 coconuts. How many more coconuts than the frontier allows does the combination of 40 fish and 70 coconuts ask for?

Beside each value, add one brief interpretation:

• Problem 1: in one or two sentences, name both parts of the cost (the money paid and the forgone pay), then label one positive claim about the evening (something evidence could check) and one normative judgment about whether to go (something that rests on values).
• Problem 2: compare your value with the first 10 fish, which cost 0.5 coconuts each, and explain in words why each extra fish costs more coconuts than the last and why that makes the frontier bow outward.
• Problem 3: classify the combination as on, inside, or outside the frontier, say what that means for the island, and give one plain-language reason an economy could end up there.
• Problem 4: classify the combination as on, inside, or outside the frontier, say what that means for the island, and describe the kind of change that could bring it within reach, keeping a shift of the whole frontier distinct from a move along it.

Explain it to a non-expert

A friend who is deciding whether to go to the same concert says, "It's only 60 dollars, so it's cheap." Write a 3–5 sentence message that explains in everyday words what the evening really costs and why, uses the shift as your example, and names one limit: the dollar figure tells your friend what is given up, but it does not decide whether the concert is worth it, because that is a judgment about values. Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one good message is possible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a coworker who says a free online webinar "costs nothing." Model answer: "The webinar has no fee, but it still has a cost: the two hours you spend on it could go to something else, like overtime or a nap you need. Economists call the best of those other uses the opportunity cost. If those two hours could have earned you money, that money is part of the real price. Whether the webinar is worth it is still your call, because that depends on what you value."

Use that pattern for your friend, with your own wording and the shift as your example.

Show every input and every arithmetic step on its own line. A reader should be able to reproduce every number you report from the concert example and the island frontier printed above, without guessing which values or steps you used.

Deliverables

Submit a single report containing:

• the four values, each with its steps shown and the brief interpretation the task names for that problem;
• your message to your friend, explaining what the evening really costs and why, using the shift as your example, and naming one limit; and
• a one-line restatement of the values you used (the ticket, the hours, the wage, and each frontier combination you read), so your work is reproducible.

Keep it to roughly one page. Clear and correct beats long.

Choose how you show it. Present your report as written text, or as a recorded audio or video explanation of about three minutes with a transcript, or as a spoken explanation recorded with a transcript. Every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

This version is designed to be completed without AI: do the computations, the interpretations, and the writing yourself, without any AI tool. Use only the illustrative values printed here. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's work, is an integrity violation under the course policy.

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