I think programmers tend to assume they're speaking to other programmers, which is the exact opposite of helpful in your situation. But FWIW, I've been teaching design students responsive web coding and basic jQuery this term, and not one of my examples has to do with math. (Which is good, because the examples that do involve even a tiny bit of math have made their eyes glaze over.)

… of course, I am not actually a programmer myself, which may have something to do with my approach ;)

Anyway, If you ever want to learn Foundation or jQuery, let me know, and I'll be happy to email you my code samples and talk you through things. Just, er, not until Project From Hell is over.