Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

When Math Breaks You

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So, I’ll be the first to admit that I am totally spoiled. Ever since we’ve been homeowners my husband has taken on all the responsibility for the “outside” tasks of homeownership: lawn care, landscaping, cleaning the gutters, the house repairs that don’t require a professional, etc. But even more importantly (to me at least), is the fact that he also handles any and all math-related tasks, math having always been the bane of my existence.

He’s currently working on redoing the deck, and this time I’ve even helped a bit, in that I painted three boards in the time it took him to paint the other twenty-one. But mostly I’ve shown my support by asking questions, listening to reports of what’s been involved in each stage of the project, and celebrating each milestone reached.

It was all going so well, and then this happened:

Me: “So how’s the deck project going?”

My husband: “How much calculus do you remember?”

Me: “And…we’re done with support.”

A Word Problem, For Your Tuesday Afternoon Enjoyment

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Question: If you have two humans with four post-secondary degrees between them, and one cat with a hyper-active thyroid-a cat who only a year ago was told by the vet that she needed to lose weight and so was put on diet cat food, and then lost weight, and then lost WAY too much weight, and then needed to gain some weight back-how long should it take for at least one of the humans to realize that they should stop continuing to feed the poor animal with diet cat food?

Answer: W-A-Y sooner than it takes for this to be embarrassing enough to mock us for on this blog.

I Give Up

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I just called my husband at work and had the following conversation.

Me: “Hey. I have a quick math question for you.”

My husband: “OK.”

Me: (feeling all proud of myself for my carefully thought-out question) “OK, I need to know how many MB’s correspond to 7 JPG’s.”

My husband: “That’s like asking, ‘How many cars does it take to go 70 mph?’ ”

Me: (totally deflated): “Oh.”

Stupid math.

Further Proof That Math Is Evil

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As I believe I’ve mentioned here before, last spring I took up knitting in an attempt to entertain myself during my ex-tre-me-ly lengthy (and currently still ongoing) recovery from The Attack Of The Hostile Alien Bacteria. It has also proven to be an excellent distraction during all the times I have wanted to throw myself in front of a bus, given that my contribution to the world over the past year has pretty much consisted of participating in the conversion of oxygen into CO2, limited as I have been, to lying on the couch and breathing.

(A friend of mine who has been dealing with her own chronic health challenge over the past 5 years summed up this situation quite well when she was commiserating with me and was all, “Oh man, I know. It’s like, ‘give me a purpose or gimme a gun!’ “)

Right now I am working on a simple pattern that basically consists of the following three steps:

1. Cast on 108 stitches

2. Knit every stitch for 72 rows.

3. Bind off all stitches.

As far as difficulty level goes, this is pretty much the knitting equivalent of “falling off a log”.

But knitting patterns are not always so easy, or so enjoyable, and this is due to the unfortunate fact (about which I was grievously uninformed ahead of time) that knitting involves copious amounts of math. And math? Is pretty much my mortal enemy.

Now for some people (and here I’m specifically thinking of my mother), this is not a problem.

A while ago my mom inherited some yarn from a knitter who was moving overseas, and when said knitter then became pregnant, my mom decided to use that yarn to make her a baby blanket. The only problem was that her pattern called for 1,000 yards of yarn, but her skein only consisted of 600 yards.

“That’s no problem,” she thought. “It’s just a baby blanket, so I’ll just make it half as big.” (She thinks these kinds of thoughts because she majored in math. We liberal arts majors know better.)

Such was her dedication to this project, and her belief in the power of numbers, that she then performed an extensive series of mathematical computations including (but not limited to) the formula for finding the area of a rectangle, square roots (SQUARE ROOTS!!), rewriting an entirely new chart of the pattern, and something involving multiples of 7. She then took the revised pattern into work to consult with her other knitting friends, and they all agreed that this project was a go, because-AND I QUOTE-“The math was certainly there.”

And of course, that is the exact moment that, despite her meticulous calculations, despite all her years as a math educator, and despite her devotion to the pursuit of higher mathematics as evidenced by the attainment of her Master’s Degree, math laughed manically, spit in her face, and then flipped her the bird.

Can you see where I’m going with this? That’s right. After all that, it didn’t work.

[Read more…] about Further Proof That Math Is Evil

Huh?

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Surrounded as I am by people immersed in the practice of math and science, no one really understands the fact that whenever I see any kind of numerical statement or mathematical equation, my brain processes this information in the same way it would if everyone around me spontaneously started speaking in tongues. Which is to say, not at all. Seriously, the world might as well be run by The Great Gods Of Random Syllable Generating for all the pathetic lack of understanding I can muster when faced with math.

I’ve been pretty much resigned to my solitary fate, but then the other day I saw a billboard that gave me a tiny glimmer of hope. Unfortunately, despite the hour I spent driving up and down I-285 last weekend, the actual physical billboard seems to have disappeared into The Ethers Of Stuff That My Engineer Husband Will Probably Accuse Me Of Making Up. But I swear; this is what it said:

√ 7,000,000 /Pie x Yellow=

And I thought, “YES! Somebody understands me and my pain!” Because that is what every single math problem since the 8th grade has looked like to me.

Now granted, it was a Chick-Fil-A billboard, with the cows telling all who passed by that they had to solve this equation before they could eat a burger.

But STILL. For that one moment, I was no longer alone.