I think I see your point. However, if the original poster didn't intend to substitute the defense motive with assault, then they could have made the substitution for us.
I think the reason I prefer columns is I do the mental expansion into large bracketed expressions. If x is a row and kept inline, then the expansion gets really wide. To keep it compact and have the symbols oriented the same as their expansion, you'd have to put the x above A and that's just silly.
I generally agree with this point of view, because a 100% failsafe solution can be so costly. I think medicine is a good example of how the cost of perfection scales badly.
However, it sounds like significant resources went to institutionalizing the person. Maybe that's good for the police who get to take the cost off their books. The government overall is still paying.
I played through two of the games twice and if I'm not mistaken, the sequence of numbers is always the same. Could they be randomized? I have a feeling children would learn the pattern and not focus on numbers.