Single post in Sprite Discovery Discussion

Read the past few (several...) pages to see what the hubbub was about. My main question after reading through ^that post and its accordions is: Why the need for color math? Like, in a genuinely curious sense; I'm not asking "why" as in "why do you do it that way; it's dumb" but just strictly "why". Is it just easier on the art staff to kind of fit things into a process of sorts?