I have never been so mad as after spending half a semester doing differential equations in class the "hard" way only to have them say nevermind... just use this handy trick called a laplace transform. That was the first math class that i had zero clue what was going on. I didnt know if what i was looking at was the question or the answer.

So do they use laplace transforms in this data stuff? or are you really thinking of a big pivot table (i dont understand how pivot tables work either...)