Pythagoras: LOL. I have the same response to maths as I do poetry and song lyrics - my eyes jump right to the end! I have to force them to go back in and engage. Gimme logic and prose!
.. So the equivalence of the 2 ways is obvious. The "problem" with the second is that we don't have immediatelly the several discrete cases, although the procedure of the second way is good for programming as we gain some time by not re-checking cases....
Grenv and I are both into programming. And I dare say we both like efficient code, too.