My husband Dave likes to think I have the answers to everything off the top of my head, including stuff I haven’t seen, studied or heard about in years. He has such faith in me. Silly man.

He phoned me from his office this morning to see if I could run to the store on my way home from work. In the same breath, he said "Write this down," and I dutifully scrawled the following:

3(n-1) = 5n + 3 – 2n

This randomness is typical of our conversations.  Hi. How’s your day going? Get eggs and bread. Solve for n.

I asked him why he was making me do algebra so early in the day, or anytime, for that matter. "Because Bill’s daughter got this in her homework and she told her teacher it wasn’t solvable. The teacher said it was, and now they’re having a dispute."

I quickly worked the equation and got this as a result:

3n – 3 = 3n + 3

You can see right away there is no solution. No value for n will make this statement true.

At least I hope there’s no solution, because I told Dave I was sure of it, and he told Bill "My wife is sure there is no solution," and Bill’s gonna tell his kid to tell her teacher "Kathy says there’s no solution!"

Apparently my husband has convinced his co-worker that I’m some kind of algebra expert. I was once. Twenty five years ago! I’m a lot fuzzier on algebraic formulas now. As I keep looking at the equation, I’m worried there’s some bizarre value for n that makes it true.

Is it solvable if n is an irrational number or something? Is there a mathematician in the house? Or a high schooler who’s currently taking algebra?

If this post gave you a headache, I’m sorry. Think of cotton candy and puppies instead. That’ll cleanse you of all things math.

p.s. Tomorrow I reveal the winner of What’s That? Wednesday!

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