See: Professor Bactria
Atlanta's law school teacher.
This was a lawschool teaching: never be afraid to backtrack. To be specific, it had been the teaching of Professor Bactria. Snow Vermacode Bactria had not been a very clever man, and had been a valuable teacher for that very reason, since his own limitations had led him to develop methods of intellectual enquiry which could be used by the less-than-brilliant.
Thanks to Bactria's teachings, Atlanta was not afraid to proceed at a plod, to question the obvious, to backtrack, or to work through the same argument three times running in the same sequence. It was a slow but effective way of working. Furthermore, it had one great advantage not specified by Bactria: it stopped her getting rattled by aggressive opponents like Zinjanthrop.
[WoH Ch7]