I learned mathematics a different way because of programs like Mathematica. While an undergrad, after lunch I would sometimes loiter in the otherwise off-limits graduate math library. One afternoon I stumbled on Moses’s ACM article on symbolic simplification followed, a few pages down, by his other article Symbolic integration: the stormy decade.…

Last week while rummaging through some old boxes I stumbled on a notebook with a curious algorithm for computing the cube root using a pocket calculator that has a square root button. For the cube root of 8 it goes:…