Laughing Matters: The One About Math

By Ryan G. Van Cleave |  Illustrations by Darcy Kelly-Laviolette

In the course of “helping” my seventh grader with her math homework the other day, I came to a stunning conclusion: I don’t math as well as my twelve-year-old daughter.

Don’t worry—I got out of the awkward situation by blaming the obvious culprits. The sun was in my eyes. El Niño caused it. It was a Leap Year. Russian hackers messed it all up.

But the truth was undeniable. My daughter is a pre-algebra guru. I’m hopelessly post-algebra. (My wife tells me this doesn’t make sense, but who can trust her? She maths a lot. And well.)

This was the beginning of the week where Math Kicked Ryan’s Butt in Five Different Ways. Let me explain via sharing these knock-me-down-to-size anecdotes that have to stay just between us, okay? I don’t want people knowing about my mathiness situation.

Situation One: See above. Blech.

Situation Two: Ryan was playing basketball. One of his shots went in the hoop. Three of his shots did not go in the hoop. How many shots were there in total? seconds elapsed before everyone watching determined that Ryan’s best basketball days were behind him?

Situation Three: I decided to take the entire first-year class of Creative Writing majors at Ringling College to an unnamed local escape room for reasons that I claimed fell under the umbrella of “community building.” I worked up a deal with the owner where all of us could join in the fun serious educational opportunity for $20/person. The mathematical conundrum occurred when the booking system insisted on first charging 7% sales tax and then a 3% booking fee. The two of us tried to reverse engineer the original sub-$20 price that’d give us a grand total, out-the-door price of $20. After ten minutes of head scratching, communal embarrassment, and general all-purpose HUHing paired with guesswork, we went with $20.08/person. Because we are sad, sad math-deficient adults.

Somewhere, a pair of high school math teachers were smiling mirthfully.

Situation Four: My daughter—not the aforementioned math guru but rather the engineering/robotics one who also maths plenty well—owns a shirt that says “Grammar is important, but math is importanter.” I tried to get her to exchange that shirt for this one. “I’m a great enginear engineir enginere I’m good at math.”

She kept them both.

Situation Five: I met up with two of my political pollster friends for an evening of root beer and darts. As we were warming up, pollster #1 threw at the bullseye and missed it to the left by 7 inches. Pollster #2 tossed her dart and it missed the bullseye to the right by 7 inches. The two laughed and high-fived, saying, “We nailed it!” Even when they explained it, I still didn’t laugh.

Situation Six: My wealthy tech-startup high school buddy promised that I could have all of his cash if he croaks first. All I have to do is log onto his laptop’s banking program and transfer out the money. “My password,” he said, “is the last 13 digits of pi.”

When my daughters explained that one to me, I was ticked off.

Situation Seven: I promised to make a list with five things on it, and I delivered seven. What can I say? 4/3 of adults struggle with fractions. Me? I struggle with out-of-control listing.

So, now you know my secret shame. I’m unlikely to math my way out of a paper bag. I’m about as anti-mathy as one gets. I never show all my work. I don’t honor the correct order of operations. I don’t always do unto one side of an equation what I do to the other. I don’t check my work. Sometimes, when no one is looking, I even divide by zero.

Did I mention, too, that I do all math problems in ink?

Last night, I heard both daughters cranking up Jay-Z, who—I’ve been assured—has 99 problems. Is that a lot? I’m unsure because the truth is that I don’t know how many problems I’ve got because math is one of them! I’m sure this is the case because I’m right 97% of the time, and the other 5% is when I do math.

Alright—it’s time to do my penance and watch every Khan Academy math video. You just wait. Next time, we’ll totally talk about linear algebra, multivariable calculus, and France’s many revolutions and republics (yeah, I’m going to watch the video on “1750-1900 Enlightenment and Revolution” just because).

Have your own gripe with mathing? Ever wonder why, for some math folks, 1 + 1 = 3 and they’re sure they’re right? Do you get rankled when someone says math is the only subject that counts? Isn’t it strange that math is the only place where someone can buy 58 watermelons and nobody—I mean NOBODY—wonders why?

If these questions make you want to set your lawn on fire, please take a moment to email me at ryanlovesmath@sarasotascene.com. We can share horror stories about geometry class in high school. Who knows? Maybe you were the kid one chair over who cheated off me to your own detriment! If so, my apologies!