When I was in Algebra II my freshman year of high school, we were taught a couple of different ways to solve a quadratic equation. A couple have fallen by the wayside (as we law students do not regularly employ math more complicated than the Hand Formula), but I remember two distinct methods that had almost opposite pros and cons: factoring, which we learned first, and using the quadratic formula, which we learned last. As my math teacher, Mr. Josh Taylor, explained and demonstrated, factoring is the easiest of the ways to solve a quadratic equation, but it doesn’t always work. In contrast, the quadratic formula always works, but it has the uncanny tendency to get unwieldy at the times when it would make the most sense to factor instead. As a result, Mr. Taylor gave the quadratic formula the nickname of “the machine gun method” — it always gets the job done, but sometimes by using more “bullets” than the job required.