<p>So my dad SUPPOSEDLY graduated from Duke with a degree in business, but I remember when I was in 4th grade, I showed him a part of my Math homework that I had trouble with, and he couldn't help me. He just sat there and stared at the textbook for like 15-20 minutes. :I </p>
<p>Anyone have parents like that?</p>
<p>My parents aren’t educated. They tend to be stubborn often. But, there is a good chance that we’ll more stubborn when we’re older.</p>
<p>Neither of my parents are especially academically-minded because their families didn’t support them when they wanted to go to college. So my mom has a trade school certificate and my dad has an associate’s degree. It’s hard to tell how they would have done if they’d gotten bachelor’s degrees.
They couldn’t help me with homework beyond third grade or so.</p>
<p>People forget stuff, doesn’t mean they’re stupid.</p>
<p>^That.</p>
<p>I don’t think my mom could help me with homework or anything like that but she tries her best as a parent and I think she’s smart in many other ways.</p>
<p>My dad has a bachelors in Computer Engineering but for some reason couldn’t help me with my math homework until I got to Algebra I and even then wasn’t all that helpful. He tries though so I have to give him points for that.</p>
<p>Programmers don’t have to do math in real life.</p>
<p>My parents are the opposite of the OP. My dad flunked out of college and my mom dropped out. My dad runs a software business and my mom coaches speech and debate; both are among the most respected professionals in their niches. They also homeschooled us. My dad graded much of our maths work and often helped us with difficult problems. If not for my dad, I wouldn’t have discovered my passion and aptitude for computer science.</p>
<p>They prove that people who failed academically are sometimes smarter, more knowledgeable, and all-around better than people with elite education, even in fields for which college is supposed to prepare students.</p>
<p>
It depends. Database admins, webmasters, and the like rarely need to do math. But people writing physics engines for games practically need to be applied mathematicians. Cryptologists need to be even more mathematically competent.</p>
<p>My mom graduated at the top of her class & was the first (& so far only) person from her family to graduate from college, but she hasn’t been able to help me with my homework since like 6th grade. I guess parents just forget the stuff they don’t need for their jobs because my mom could tell you anything about accounting but nothing about trigonometry.</p>
<p>My mother majored in math (with honors) and has an MBA. She looks at my math homework and has no idea what’s flying (she graduated college in 1986 and hasn’t worked in a math-related field since 1990, so I cut her slack 
), but if I explain what I have to do and give it to her to check, she’s MUCH better at it than I am.
My dad is a programmer (actually, a certified “scrum master” )and a math whiz, but he can’t help me because he looks at my problems and is like, “well, that’s the answer.” And I ask, “Why? I need to understand for the test!” and he just goes, “well, that’s what it is!” and looks blank. Like, of COURSE that’s what it is! Stupid of me to even bother asking. Remind me, why did I need your help again?
Neither of them can spell worth a penny, and if I asked them a question on science beyond the elementary level they’d look at me blankly, but I can handle that :). Sometimes I wonder what kind of genetic misprint happened when I was made…</p>
<p>“Hire a teenager while he still knows everything…”</p>
<p>My dad went to HYPSM and then got an MBA at a USNews Top 3 business school, yet he stopped being able to help me with homework after 4th grade.</p>
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<p>MaineLonghorn: if everything you need to know is learned in high school, then yeah, I know more than my parents right now.
It’s obviously not, however, and as my parents know a heck of a lot more than I do about pretty much everything (though you’ll never hear me telling THEM that) I’ll live with having to teach them the quadratic formula.</p>
<p>Lol – you can teach them about the quadratic forumula. And they can teach you about insurance. EVERYONE (parents, teenagers, etc) are “smart but dumb” – smart about some things, dumb about others.</p>
<p>What I don’t get is that my dad was a business major – at least SOME math is required for that field. And I remember that the 4th grade homework was on adding fractions. If you went to a top 10 school, how exactly do you forget adding/subtracting fractions especially if it’s used in everyday life (like measuring things to build stuff)?</p>
<p>
My handwriting is atrocious because I type almost everything. Someone’s mental arithmetic could be atrocious after using a calculator for all arithmetic.</p>
<p>My mother was educated, having a degree in Accounting from Rowan University (used to be Glassboro, she was the first person in her family’s history to attend college) but was very, very ditzy. She was somewhat helpful on homework and was very good at essay-construction. But when it came to common sense stuff, she often missed the mark haha. </p>
<p>My father has a BA in English and Economics (he double-majored) from Rutgers University and an MS in Management from NJIT. He’s worked as a sales executive for multiple frozen food companies, and briefly was president of his own distribution company. He’s very well-educated and very intelligent, and is always of great help on homework (he never will give me an answer though).</p>
<p>Not working with something for 10+ years is no excuse to forget math…</p>
<p>My dad grew up during the Cultural Revolution in China in the 60s and was one of the first people to actually attend a university in China after the Cultural Revolution. Before, he only studied until middle school, and he would study one to two years ahead so he could get done quickly.</p>
<p>In college, he studied Biology, but still took a math course. He graduated from university in 1979 and taught for a few years.</p>
<p>He then immigrated to the United States in the early 90s with my mother and sister.</p>
<p>In the U.S., he pursued a Masters and a PhD both unrelated to mathematics.</p>
<p>However, he is better at math than all the math teachers at my school, including math major Calc teachers…</p>
<p>He literally made me tell one of my teachers that she was wrong and he was right, and in fact, he was.
Honestly, there’s a difference between knowing it, teaching it, and both.</p>
<p>I’ve had math teachers in the past who would stop and think for 3 seconds on something as simple as 67 - 43 or something.</p>