There were many good Y words like Youth, Years, Yellow, Yogurt, Yardstick, Yarn, and Yipee to write about, but every time I tried to think about a way to develop a post on one of them, the song, Yes! We Have No Bananas, was the only thing that popped into my head. Are you familiar with that song?
The song first became a hit in 1923 and has been recorded many times. (The Wiki Page needed more references, so I'm not going into any more of its history.) I first heard it in third grade, and I had to think twice about the meaning. The song was saying yes but meant no. I thought it was very clever.
Flash forward a few years to when I was learning about negative numbers, and I just couldn't understand how you could multiply two negative numbers and get a positive result. But Aunt Martha had the perfect words to describe it to me. She said, "I don't have no pencil. Do I have a pencil or not?" With those few words, it all made sense. I did have a pencil. That example reminded me of the banana song and the clever use of yes and no, and it seemed to be a good example for negative numbers, too. If you have a yes (positive number) combined with a no (negative number), the result is negative. There you have it. Simple math explained in a complicated way. :)
And now I have two posts in a row with a math theme (remember yesterday and using X as a math variable). Although granted, it's a weak theme, I may use it to finish up. So, can you guess what tomorrow's post will be about?
