I remember university teacher of mine had a collection of a few problems which if you typed it into Mathematica would give an answer on a very different form than what you would be likely to get if you solved by hand the 'normal' way. Handy for giving you a heads up on who might be 'cheating'.

Same is true here. Look at the solution to the quadratic in the beginning. I suspect most students would use the quadratic formula and not complete the square by hand.

Assume learning by doing, and Alpha's ability to solve any introductory problem, and you are screwed.