OT: Interesting math problem...

[geoschmo]

Will said:
... there is also a sort of mathematical intuition there, that there already is a trivial solution for zeros, and a non-trivial solution most likely will not have the zeros. But, overall, I was just looking to solve it quickly, elegantly, and I determined that rather than proving V != 0, and doing most of the problem twice, I would just ignore that possibility, and go with the more "interesting" one. And, usually, that works

Ok. I guess it is some assumption grounded in years of number theory and probablility or something. Lacking that I went more towards the common sense, brute force method of substition. It was not inherantly obvious to me that because the trivial answer had zeros the non-trivial answer could not. I also don't see how you could make the assumption without proving or disproving posibilities that there isn't more then one correct answer.