[bmuon]

> You can't handwave your way through a math exam

This reminds me of a calculus exam a long time ago. One of the problems was "given the ellipsoid define by formula ______ and a certain line, find the point in the line closest to the ellipsoid". The goal for this problem was for us to use Lagrangian multipliers and I hadn't studied that one particular subject. However... They made a mistake writing the exam. The ellipsoid was symmetrical, its intersection with the xy plane was a circle and the line was also in the xy plane. I only needed high school math to successfully handwave it. Lots of facepalms from my TAs.

[tonyarkles]

You've just described the vast majority of my experiences in my EE E&M class. Very hard multi-variate calculus problems, but as soon as you can find the symmetry they get dramatically easier.