In this series, I’m compiling some of the quips and one-liners that I’ll use with my students to hopefully make my lessons more memorable for them.
Today’s one-liner is one that I’ll use when I want to discourage students from using a logically correct and laboriously cumbersome method. For example:
Find a polynomial
and a constant
so that
.
Hypothetically, this can be done by long division:
However, this takes a lot of time and space, and there are ample opportunities to make a careless mistake along the way (particularly when subtracting negative numbers). Since there’s an alternative method that could be used (we’re dividing by something of the form 
Yes, you could use long division. You could also stick thumbtacks in your eyes; I don’t recommend it.
Instead, when possible, I guide students toward the quicker method of synthetic division:
Mean Green Math 
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