Ten-year-old Lena Draper, from Marion, OH, was stumped with her math homework and needed help. And who do you go to when in need? The police of course!
The fifth grader jumped on Facebook and went straight to the Marion police department. “I’m having trouble with my homework. Could you help me?” Here was the problem: (8+29) x 15.
Lt. B.J. Gruber, age 42, came to the rescue. “Do the numbers in parenthesis first.”
Lena didn’t stop there, and asked him to help her with a second problem: (90+27) + (29+15) x 2.
The patient officer did his best to help her again. “Take the answer from the first parenthesis plus the answer from the second parenthesis and multiply that answer times two. Work left to right doing the work inside [the] parenthesis first.”
But, having been a few decades since he last sat in math class, the officer was a little rusty with the order of things. When Lena’s mom posted the Facebook exchange, she found out from a friend that the second answer was wrong – the order of operation was, well, out of order. Gruber admits his best subject was always history, not math.
See the full story here.