Hi, what do you think of the sentence below, somehow I’m of the impression that there is something wrong with the subject-verb agreement:
The intricacy of the mathematical equation drove the student crazy trying to solve it.
TOEIC listening, photographs: A couple dancing
Grammatically may be all in order, but the sentence is formed bad. “it” refers to “equation”.
Would be better:
While trying to solve the mathematical equation, the intricacy of it drove the student crazy.
To me, here the intricacy tries (/tried/ was trying) to solve the equation. As well as in the first version. 
Why?
The intricacy of the mathematical equation drove the student crazy. When? While he was trying to solve the equation.
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Let’s try some other variations:
While trying to solve the mathematical equation, the student was driven crazy by the intricacy of it.
Trying to solve the intricate mathematical equation drove the student crazy.
Amy
Much more clear and ordered.
Not “he” in the case… In my understanding, ‘while’-clause with gerind just describes the conditions under which the subject (‘the intricacy’ in the case) acts/acted (‘drove’).
Yes, Tamara.
“the intricacy” is a subject.
The object is “the student”, so - “he”.
The object (student) is driven crazy by the subject (intricacy) while
the object (student) was trying to solve the equation (in this part of the sentence the object of the first part turns into the subject, while the object is “equation”). But aren’t we driven crazy yet with all that subject-object nonsense? We’ve just tried to refine the sentence disliked by Torsten.
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Just to get back to Torsten’s original question, it might be worth noting that “go crazy trying to do (something)” is a normal phrase.
But Torsten’s sentence is awkward because it seems to say that ‘the student went crazy trying to solve the intricacy’ (rather than ‘solve the equation’).
.
Amy