Monday morning and the grade four is off to school. He forgot to mention on Friday, Saturday and Sunday that he had homework so, in addition to making his breakfast and lunch, shoveling the driveway and checking his pockets for explosive devices, we had to struggle with math.

Ah, the new methods of teaching math.

It was simple multiplication and all went well until we reached "what is the relationship between the odd and even products and their factors?"

What does this mean? I know what a factor is and I know what a product is, but what is meant by 'relationship' in this context? Is this a valid and/or meaningful question?