4pieces of wood each 11 and a half inches long are required to build a cabinet. if all four pieces are cut from one board and 1 inch is allowed for waste in cutting each piece, how long should the board be?

Ok first we calculate the length of board without losses:
4 * 11.5 = 46 inches
then, we have 1 inch of waste allowed fir each piece, so the total waste is 4*1 = 4 inches

finally, we will add the length of the waste to the desired length to get the total length of the board as follows:
total length of board = 46+4 = 50 inches

The question is kind of confusing. if it's asking how many variations of answers can you give. then do 4^5 for your answer.this would be something like the first question could be a and the 2nd c or first b next c etc. if you can, ask the teacher for a better confirmation of what it's asking. if i'm assuming correctly what it's asking, it's 625 different variations.