A series of pedagogical problem set exercises are posed that illustrate the principles behind material efficiency green metrics and their application in developing a deeper understanding of reaction and synthesis plan analysis and strategies to optimize them. Rigorous, yet simple, mathematical proofs are given for some of the fundamental concepts, particularly how metrics for overall plan material performance are related to their composite counterparts for individual reactions. Throughout this exposition, whenever a synthesis scheme is examined, it is converted into a compact tree diagram that is used to depict plans of any degree of complexity (linear or convergent) as a means to conveniently keep track of all reagents, intermediates, reaction yields, stoichiometric coefficients, number of branches, number of reaction steps, and convergent steps. We demonstrate that such tree diagrams facilitate the computation of material efficiency metrics for any individual reaction in a plan as well as for the entire plan. We also show how such diagrams may be used to plan schedules for reaction operations when multiple linear branches are run concurrently. For brevity the Supporting Information contains full solutions to posed problems.