A few years ago our daughter’s school was having career day for all of the third grade classes. She brought home a note asking for parents to volunteer to come in and talk about their jobs to three classes. I am an actuary with a degree in mathematics and knew my profession and college major were likely to be underrepresented, so I volunteered to come in.

On the appointed day I was introduced to two other dads who had been assigned to make their presentations with me. We each were given 5 minutes to speak to the kids. The children were then going to ask questions for a maximum of ten minutes. One dad was a fireman and he had come dressed in his fire fighting uniform. I was impressed. The other presenter was also in his uniform, although I wasn’t sure what he did for a living until I read his cap which said “Orkin.” I suppose I was also in uniform – a blue suit with a white shirt and red tie.

I was first, and tried to impress the kids with a mathematical trick I learned as a teenager. The class chose three six digit numbers which I wrote on the blackboard. I immediately wrote down three other 6 digit numbers followed by the sum of all six numbers. I turned around slowly to the class, trying unsuccessfully to hide my pride at how quickly I had added all of those numbers. One boy had his hand raised. In my mind, I imagined him saying, “Mr. LeSueur that is certainly the most amazing trick I have ever seen. I know it is unlikely that I will be smart enough, but maybe you can explain how to do this so I can show my parents tonight right after we watch Book TV on CSPAN2. Before today I wanted to be an NBA basketball player, but now I want to be a mathematician.”

“Jason, do you have a question?” the teacher asked.

“My tooth fell out yesterday.” Jason announced.

The classroom erupted as everyone announced when they lost their last tooth and where they were when it happened. By the time the teacher restored order, I only had one minute left. I showed them my calculator, punched in the number “07734” and turned it upside down to show them it spelled “hello.” I wrote the word “actuary” on the board and sat down.

The fireman was next. He talked about putting out fires, saving people's lives, sliding down a fire pole and driving a big fire truck. He introduced the fire station mascot, a Dalmatian puppy named “Hose A.” The kids loved it.

Orkin guy was last. He brought a tray containing random dead bugs, hairy spiders and giant cockroaches. He lectured the kids about the danger of poisons. He kept his presentation to 5 minutes.

By now we only had time for five minutes of questions. All of the questions were for the fireman. "Have you ever almost died in a fire?" "What is the biggest fire you ever saw?" “Do you get scared?” “Can I pet the puppy?” “What is the puppy’s name? How old is he?”

The teacher told the students there was time for one final question, and maybe it should be for me or the Orkin guy. A boy in front raised his hand. “What is the biggest cockroach you ever saw?”

I looked at the Orkin guy. “Do you want to answer that or shall I?”

I'm a quick learner. I knew the first presentation had not gone well. Fortunately, I had a backup presentation. In the next class I ditched my arithmetic trick. This time, I went with my bicycle theft insurance talk. How many of you have a bicycle? Everyone raised his hand. Ever had a bicycle stolen? No one. Okay, I asked, how many of you know someone who's had a bicycle stolen? Still no one. It was going to be hard to sell this audience on the need for bicycle theft insurance. I was ready to show them how to calculate the probability of having your bike stolen and how an actuary uses that to calculate a premium that spreads the risk over a large pool of insured’s. I even was planning to discuss how the premium was impacted by administrative expenses, taxes and profit margin. I decided I had overestimated the intellectual curiosity of my audience. I just did the six digit math trick.

I had plenty of time to prepare for my last presentation while the fireman and Orkin guy talked to the kids and answered their questions. I had to fight the tendency to forget who my audience was and talk over their heads. I thought I could borrow the Dalmatian puppy and ask the kids to estimate how many spots he had based on looking at one side of him. Then we could actually count them. Not a bad start. Then I could discuss the reasons for the difference in life expectancy between dogs and humans and explain why seven dog years equal one human year. The kids would love that!

Or what about taking a dead spider from Orkin guy? We could count his legs. Then I could discuss how our number system would have developed if people had eight fingers instead of ten. And that could lead to translating numbers from base ten to base eight! I could hardly contain my excitement.

Our time was up and we were being led to the last classroom. The kids started giggling when they saw the puppy. They were obviously not in the mood for a discussion of puppy longevity or imagining math with two of their fingers cut off. I just did my math trick and finished in 3 minutes.

I have recovered from that career day disaster and am no longer bitter. But my advice to parents everywhere is if you go to your child’s school for career day, bring a puppy or a cockroach with you.