My kid is quite good at math, and he came to me with a problem in pre-Calculus that I tried to work out. After a few minutes he told me “I even tried using the midpoint formula and couldn’t do it.” After I was sitting there like a dummy, essentially trying to DERIVE the midpoint formula from first principles.
I said to Kid “You mean you have a formula?” He said “Yes.”
We worked it out.
Then he wanted to tell his friend he’d solved it, because his friend was also having trouble.
I told him “Don’t be surprised if your friend already figured it out but didn’t tell you”. Which is how it turned out. I told Kid “Well, at least you both got the same answer.”
That’s a good one