I have been humbled.

Trying to help my daughter with algebra.

This is not easy for me to admit.

I can make up all kinds of excuses: It has been over thirty years since I took algebra. They teach math differently these days. My child’s textbook doesn’t explain it right. My kid had been sick and missed that lecture.

While these all may be true, the problem does not ask, “Why can’t you solve this?” On the contrary, it asks, “Use the surface area with the correct number of significant digits–” and I’m lost. Significant digits? Have I ever heard of that?

So I google “significant digits,” and google does its best to explain that significant digits are all whole numbers plus zeros if they’re place holders and not to the left of the first numerical digit to the left of the decimal point or right of the last numerical digit to the right of the decimal point (um, I think).

So scrap google. Skip to the next part of the problem: “...find the surface area of the box in meters. Round to the nearest tenth.”  Only I don’t know if I round to the nearest tenth as I’m doing the problem (nope, it turns out it only works when I round to the nearest hundredth) or wait until I’m done and then round (yes, but I HAVE to round to the hundredths place as I go, or the answer is wrong).

As if that’s not exhausting enough (are you even still following me?), the surface area has been given. In square feet. But it turns out, converting feet to meters is NOT the same as converting SQUARE feet to SQUARE meters.  (This I feel like I may have known that at one time. Not that I often need to convert square feet to square meters, but I’m all about the practicality of math, and I can at least IMAGINE a time when I MIGHT be in a foreign country, like any country besides the US, and I MIGHT need to find out how much material I need to buy for some construction project, painting project, or gift wrapping project, and maybe I’m having a hard time visualizing how much that is in a measurement I’m familiar with.)

And so, after getting a gazillion wrong answers, I finally reach out to my math teacher friends. I get seven (SEVEN!!!) friends to help me via facebook messenger. Simultaneously. And I’m feeling rather hopeful.

Until five of them get the answer wrong.

I find it a little disturbing that five out of seven teachers cannot do this problem (although I do know enough about math to realize that

my sample size is too small to make any generalizations about the lack of math geniuses among my teacher friends.)

Of the two teachers who are right, each has a different way of solving the problem (both of which require that rounding-to-the-hundredth thing).  One says convert the height, length, and width of the original box to meters before solving for the surface area. That makes sense to me. (The other one loses me converting square feet to square meters.)

I am SO excited about this minor victory and cannot WAIT to show my daughter how to do it.

She gets it in an instant.

And then asks me about converting the volume to cubic yards. And I am like, “Who measures anything in cubic yards?! What is this, sand?” Pause. Deep breath. “Just convert first; then solve for volume. You’ll be fine.”

As for me, I give up.

Final score:

Algebra: one.

Me: zero.