the "10 dogs with spots" theory...

i'm not going to lie to you, i am not good at math. while i quite fondly recall saying, "when the hell am i ever going to use this stuff?" in high school (and now realizing that i got to the ripe old age of 29 without actually using most of it), i did struggle.

today i got this in an email:

which made me laugh so hard because i am quite confident that i actually put this on an assignment in mr. eaton's legendary grade 10 math class. the class where the same kid was sent EVERY DAY to the office accompanied by the entire class singing "na na na nah, na na na nah, hey hey hey, good bye!" the same class where ashley and i were allowed to write our tests together because our combined efforts were still hit-or-miss on a passing grade. the very class where the "10 dogs with spots" theory was born. allow me to explain.

mr. eaton posed the question: 10x - x = ?

now, the correct answer is 9x. mine and ashley's answer was 10. our explanation? if you have 10 dogs with spots, and you take away the spots, you still have 10 dogs. made sense to us. i think mr. eaton thought we'd make great trailer park wives one day.