06 February 2011

Puzzle - Help the Painter

Your friend is a painter and he paints houses for quite sometime. He is highly professional and highly sought after as he known for his quality work and fair painting charges. Throughout his life he has painted lot of houses that are regular sizes - rectangles, squares and circles. He charges his customer based on the area he paints. (you see calculating area for regular shapes is cake for him)

Last week, a new potential customer called him up for a huge order that will keep him and his team busy for next five to seven months. The catch here is that the customer is not willing to pay a penny more and even your friend being a professional painter wants to quote a fair pricing strategy to his new potential customer to win this order. BTW, did i tell you that the area to be painted are irregular shapes.

The painting area is

  • Irregularly shaped like amoeba
  • Each surface is uniquely shaped (bare minimum he needs to paint 1000 such surface different in 1000 ways)


What is the pricing strategy that your friend can offer to his customer so that both your friend and his customer is happy.