On mastering algorithms...

"A mastered algorithm in the hands of a student is an incomparable tool laying bare the conceptual structure of the mathematical problems that the algorithm solves. With such tools, and with the guidance of good teachers in their use, a student can grasp and integrate in twelve years a body of mathematics that it has taken hundreds of geniuses thousands of years to devise."

-- David Ross, Ph.D., a mathematician at Kodak Research Labs