Some mathematics problems, while easy to pose and visualise, can be deceptively difficult to solve. For example, suppose we want to find the area of a three foot wide footpath around the edge of an elliptical shaped swimming pool. The problem is trivial if the pool is circular, in which case we simply subtract the areas of two concentric circles. At first blush, the elliptical pool problem does not appear to be much more difficult, especially if we can recall that the formula for the area of an ellipse is A = πab where a and b are respectively the lengths of the semi-major and semi-minor axes. In any case, we might think that it would be a straightforward calculus problem involving the area between two curves.