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Message: [QUOTE="JoePgh, post: 4087773, member: 1131"] My high school math teachers, Brother Henry and Brother Carl, would have agreed with you. I presume they are now resting in peace, despite the mayhem that Brother Henry in particular inflicted on us as high school freshmen. However, while math is constant, mathematical communication has changed a bit since those halcyon days. The biggest change has been the near universal use of spreadsheet software, which requires an explicit multiplication operator ("*", an asterisk) in cell formulas. So, for a spreadsheet maven (or for that matter a Fortran programmer) the use of the asterisk would be natural. Regarding the explicit use of "1" as the multiplying factor for the 3-point and free throw expressions, I did that for the 3-point difference to emphasize that the correct factor there is indeed 1 and not 3, as one might initially expect. Having included it for the 3-point term, it seemed merely consistent to include it also for the free throw term. Maybe someone of more tender years will find a way to write this equation which is even more natural and communicative for the millenial generation, but I cannot aspire to that role. [/QUOTE]