A friend of mine asked his eight-year-old son last night, "what did you learn in school today?" Multiplication is looming large, with it being third grade and all. He told his dad, "We learned about carrying the pig today." The immediate assumption, of course, was that this was some clever invention of an enterprising teacher who was hoping that a visual reference might help the mathematical concept of carrying numbers stick. Au contraire. No math lesson here, it was … [Read more...]