[Millennium]

We were all newbies once, and newbies have to start somewhere, even if it is not the most "pure" of beginnings. The kind of proof-snobbery you're displaying here likely bears a large part of the blame for driving people away from math in the first place.

Yes, there is more to math than number-crunching, but to claim that number-crunching is not math is to forget the very roots of the discipline. This is where it begins, and it's where people who have been out of practice for a while return. Give it some respect.