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Introductory quantitative courses in Calculus and Statistics teach students to fit a linear equation to a data set by exposing them the conceptual formulae for the slope and intercept of the line that provides the best least squares fit. Next the students are presented with computational or short cut formulae. These computational formulae take several mathematically equivalent forms. All of these computational formulae serve no useful educational purpose given current computational technology. Students are far better off, whether they are doing the simple calculations by hand or using a worksheet environment like Excel, to use the conceptual formulae for the calculations. Doing the calculations with conceptual formulae may take a little longer, but the extra time will be well spent because the students will be not be exposed to superfluous formulae which exist for legacy reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]