Originally published on malcolmlow.com as part of the Foundational Mathematics & Algorithms series. For four millennia—spanning Babylonian clay tablets, Renaissance cryptanalysts, and modern classroom algebra—solving quadratic equations has been synonymous with two unappealing extremes: brute-force factor guessing or blind formula memorization . In December 2019, Professor Po-Shen Loh of Carnegie Mellon University introduced a method that bypasses both. By decomposing the mo...