4 pieces 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