Note: this will not use any complicated things we haven't learned yet. Originally, I was trying to (like many others) account for every single possibility and then assign the variable for positive and negative numbers based on which possibility had occurred. This is not the way to do it. Instead, I made a counter for the positive numbers, and a counter for the negative numbers. I then went through each number individually to find out if it was negative, positive, or zero. If it was negative, I added 1 to the negative counter, if it was positive, I added 1 to the positive counter, and if it was zero, I did nothing. int counterPositive = 0; int counterNegative = 0; int x = reader.readLine int y = reader.readLine int z = reader.readLine. if (x is positive) add 1 to counterPositive; else if (x is negative) add 1 to counterNegative; else do nothing; Then repeat for all three numbers. Hope this helps :)