title: What is the purpose of this code
body: <p>In this code below, what is the purpose of <code>total = 0</code> and the line 5? This code should print 4 and 8 but it only returns 2!</p>
  
  <pre><code>def count_small(numbers):
      total = 0
      for n in numbers:
          if n &lt; 10:
              total = total + 1
      return total
  
  
  lost = [4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42]
  small = count_small(lost)
  print small
  </code></pre>