hey fily -

  i'm not the best person to answer this question (as i'm really 
something of a newb myself,) but i'll get you started...

  every method in ruby returns a value (even if it is nil, thus all the 
=>nil's in irb.)  by default, the value that a method returns is the 
LAST statement evaluated - which is something to be aware of.

  note that for the example you have shown this works just as well:

def multiply(val1, val2 )
  val1 * val2
end

value = multiply( 10, 20 )
puts value

#=> 200

  while there are really times when you want to use 'return,' (which 
surely someone else can better explain,) generally speaking, the last 
statement evaluated in your method is what is returned.

  -j

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