They weren’t ordinary polynomials. Each was a thin slip of vellum with coefficients inked in a steady hand and a single root circled in red. When Etta arranged the slips on her counter and traced the circled root, the room hummed—shapes in the air bent, and the river outside briefly forgot to flow downstream.
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Unlike standard algebra texts that front-load theory and relegate problems to the end of a chapter, Barbeau adopts a "problem-driven" approach. They weren’t ordinary polynomials