When a 10-Year-Old Was Stumped on Her Math Homework, She Asked Local Police For Help

When a fifth grader came across a difficult math homework problem, she treated it like an emergency — and enlisted help from local police to solve it. Ohio resident Lena Draper reached out to the Marion Police Department via Facebook message with her plea, and they quickly came to her aid.

The 10-year-old was having trouble finding a solution to the problem (8 + 29) x 15, and the person behind the department's Facebook account explained exactly how to find the answer: by adding the numbers in parentheses first and then multiplying by 15.

But then things got a bit more complicated, as Lena replied with yet another tricky problem: (90 + 27) + (29 + 15) x 2. Someone from the department replied, explaining, "Take the answer from the first parenthesis plus the answer from the second parenthesis and multiply that answer by two."

If you recall that trusty math abbreviation PEMDAS, which stands for parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction, you'll realize that whoever attempted to solve that second problem was actually incorrect. Lena should've added the numbers in the second parentheses first, multiplied that number by two, and then added it to the numbers in the first parentheses.

Lena's mom, Molly Draper, shared screenshots of her daughter's Facebook messages with the world, and the department shared her post, writing, "We do aim to be a full service police department after all." Even though the police department gave Lena the wrong answer, we still can't help but say "aww" at this adorable interaction. It's the thought that counts!