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“Fine. Two?” The words sound through clenched teeth.
“Well, that’s rude. I’m sure I have more than two friends.”
“Cupssss,” he says, drawing out theslike a snake.
“Oh,cups.” I definitely enjoy needling him. “Sure, two sounds good.”
He exhales and nudges my notebook back toward me. “Write down two cups, and then you need to multiply by your conversion factor.”
“One hundred fifty grams per cup?”
“Yes, but remember this is all about keeping your units straight. You like fractions, right?”
“If you say so.”
“You’re good at fractions, so think of this that way.”
I’m good at fractions? It’s been a very long time since anyone complimented my math skills. Maybe since fourth grade. Consequently, I have a hard time concentrating on his next words, but I package the pleasure to savor at home.
“You have to remember you want to cancel out the units,” he says, “so they always have to be top and bottom, like when you’re multiplying fractions. Since you start with two cups, that means... ?”
“One hundred fifty grams goes on... top? Putting one cup on the bottom?” I wince, sure I’m wrong. I hate being wrong.
“Exactly,” he says. Though there is no emotion in his voice, I feel like I’ve won the lottery. “After that it’s only a matter of multiplying the numbers on top and dividing by those on the bottom. Easy.”
The way he explains it, it is. However... “Most of these problems are way harder than that. How am I supposed to keep everything straight?”
“Let’s try another.” He leans back again and considers the ceiling. “How about this? You’re planning a huge pre-finals party and you need to know if you can afford to buy pizza for everyone.”
“Why don’t I buy as much as I can, and the latecomers will just be out of luck?” I give him a cheesy grin.
He ignores me. “How many slices do you think people eat, on average?”
“My little brother can eat a whole large if we let him.”
Noah closes his eyes for a second to fortify himself against my cheekiness. “Let’s assume an average of two since most singles won’t allow themselves to look like a pig in front of a large group. We need to know the cost for one pizza and how many slices are in each.”
“If we go cheap, I can get a five-dollar pizza with eight slices.”
“No one is expecting fancy at a student gathering, so cheap it is. How many people do you want to invite?”
I want to argue about the number, but he’s sounding weary, so I rein in the teasing and play nice. “Forty?”
“Forty. Write down all our given information. What do we have?”
“Okay. Forty people, five dollars per pizza with eight slices each, and an average consumption of two slices.”
“Now set up your equation.”
“But this is where I get confused! I don’t know which one to start with.”
“So start at the end and work backward.”
I give him my blankest stare.
He refuses to react. “What are we trying to determine?”
Sigh. “How much money I will spend.”
