OXFORD
1989
This lecturer seems to have a tautology problem:
- “A mapping is 1-1 and onto if and only if it is 1-1 and onto.”
From a lecturer who knows exactly what he intends to do:
- “….and now we need to increase n. The best way to increase n is to increase n.”
Obviously a student who didn’t like his lecturer:
- “I didn’t think he could live down to his reputation, but he did.”
Another dissatisfied student?:
- “Oh dear, where’s my rifle….”
Referring to exams? I hope not…:
- “…because if you’re dead earlier, you certainly are dead later on…”
Good helpful instruction here:
- “You could sort a sequence by assigning 1,2,3… to it. That’s the fastest sort routine I know of!”
Confused medium?:
- “Please yell out if there are any typing errors”
In the middle of a difficult proof:
- “This is the stage where I start to pray”…
followed by…
“Somebody up there is being kind to me, are they? No.”
followed by…
“I’ve done something silly with a square root of 2.”
Guess which subject:
- “I have a personality disorder: I don’t like to assume things are measurable.”
More Lebesgue Integration quotes:
- “You can sleep if you want.”
- “It’s delicate to get your hands on it.”
- “Will we all agree to shut that one in a cupboard?”
- “Well we can’t quite stop yet – although I am tempted…”
Sounds too good to be true:
- “This is fun: lots of magical ways to solve differential equations!”
Any idea of the context of this one?:
- “If you watch T.V. you see there are such things as Marathons”
A disillusioned lecturer:
- “In the old days, the pure days…”
A weensy big headed, are we?:
- “I’m just showing off, seeing how fast I can do them…”
Some quotes from a statistics lecturer:
- “This is a stupid example – you can see why; it’s an exam question.”
- “We observe approximate approximation to …. “
A hopeful Rings and Groups lecturer:
- “… a cube, so it has 8 faces … “
A lecturer nicknamed ‘Hurricane’:
- “OK? Well, not very ok but you can find the mistake yourself”
followed by…
“Whatever you need to get the answer”
An undergraduate talking about Fermat’s last theorem, so I am told…:
- “A millionth of a second is virtually forever”
- “It doesn’t really make a lot of difference between 8 and 33”
Yet *more* Lebesgue integration quotes:
- “Integration by parts is not economical on paper”
- “I can’t be bothered. Can’t we just go back and……”
- “It’s all so simple it’s hard to remember”
- “I worked it out last night – let’s see if it works in the daylight”
This term’s contradictions prize:
- “I want to stop looking at inhomogeneous equations and start looking at inhomogeneous equations”
Nope, this isn’t ‘Hurricane’:
- “Imagine me running towards you at root-three-over-two c”
Physicists? Thick?:
- ” ‘3+1′ is physicists’ notation for ‘4’ “
You’ll never guess what – we had an incredibly quotable Lebesgue integration lecturer:
- “Has anyone got it out yet? (Pause) You’re not doing it are you?”
- “It looks an incredibly integrable function”
- “Proof’s easy, by the way, provided I keep my act together”
- [to a moving blackboard] “SIT!!!”
- “Sorry about that – I’m teaching this to some engineers…they’d have a fit if they saw” [a Lipschitz condition]
- “My mind’s gone crazy again”
- “I’ll just reassmble the duster”
- “Take the computer and it will do lotsof things while you’re at the pub”
- “In lectures, everywhere you have chaos”
Some quotes from a Rings and Groups lecturer:
- “Examples come in two types: interesting ones and examination ones”
- “This [z->conj(z)] is worse than bad”
- “Now I run down the r’s and up the b’s”
- “Just send one of the 1st years to check…”
A confuddled lecturer:
- “Is this the right lecture theatre?”
Do I really need to tell you where these came from?:
- “The proof is not required for finals, but I’m going to give you it anyway because it’s nice.”
- “multiplied by the stupid derivative dFx”
- “I’d thought we’d spend the rest of the day in light entertainment: Let’s do some schools questions!”
- “Questions are easy, with a bit of luck”
- “Tonelli would tell us…” (undergraduate) “No he wouldn’t, he’s dead”
- “Knock that sign for 6 and use Tonelli somewhere”
- “If you want to cut corners, an intelligent corner to cut is not to learn the proofs of any of these theorems”
- “And that’s the singularity that’s going to save our bacon”
- “I’ll take a special delta when I see what I need”
- “And the Riemann-Lebesgue lemma zaps it again”
- “I am falling into a trap. I assume I know it’s there – I want to fall into it”
- “If x were negative this would go sky-high – it would blast off the map”
- “Can I bring along an elephant and some trumpets to draw your attention…”
- “Pinch yourself, kiss your neighbour, anything to draw attantion to this” (loud kissing sound of student kissing neighbour)
- “Let me make a mistake now”
- “Meanwhile back at the ranch…”
- “It’s my lucky day!” [after a double-cancelling error]
- “I actually like integrating”
- “I love integrating” [Referring to previous lecturer]
- “That woman can’t clean the board. I pay someone to clean the floor at home and then I come here and spend 15 minutes mucking around”
- “We could do it if we could pull the sum sign through and that’s what God gave us the monotone convergence theorem for”
- “…and at this stage your heart should have a slight hiccup”
- “…and at this stage you should go and have a beer”
- “I’ll massage this into a shape you can use the MCT on”
- “Now we go into automatic drive and finish this off”
- “I’m going to use this diagram. It’s not completely silly”
After turning out all the lights:
- “So that’s what these switches do!”
From analysis lectures:
- “The fact they’re called divided differences suggests that they are the difference of 2 things divided by something”
- “10! is fairly small”
A different quotable lecturer:
- “Are you bored?” [Students shout Yes]
- “Are you mega-bored?” [Students shout YES]
- “What a waste of life is coming to Oxford to get bored in lectures.”
A talkative lecturer:
- “No, let me stop gibbering my mouth off without thinking about it beforehand… and I’ve just shot myself in the foot”
Obviously good at making mistakes:
- “I’ve just realised I’ve done something crazy…in the notes this time”
A sad lecturer’s tale:
- “I used to be quite clever – it’s the drink”
Proof technique obviously ok:
- “Well I guess that’s a respectable proof actually”
More of the prolific lecturer:
- “You keep thinking you’ve got over the hiccups and then they come back again”
- “I like it. (referring to a lemma) It looks upside down to me.”
- “…there’s the following delicious little proof”
- “I’ve got two 2’s, the third should be a 3”
- “Let’s fall into the trap – let’s do the obviuos thing”
- “(referring to a function) It looks like a case of Carling Black Label”
- “The trick is not to write anything”
- “Ugh. This is horrid, isn’t it”
- “It will enable you to pull derivavtives through integrals, which you have wanted to do all your life – and some of you have been. This tells you when you can legally do it.”
Who said proofs were legal?:
- “Watch this proof carefully – it looks like a confidence trick”
Remember continuity and differentiablity?:
- “In other words this is going to be a 3 epsilon proof.”
Referring to Lorentz:
- “It’s a garden trellis type transformation”
- “To be consistent, call it *^(-1)”
- “We get our own back by calling rotations in the plane ‘Pseudo-Lorentz’”
From a computing lecture:
- “A degree’s worth more than a monitor”
In a differential equations lecture:
- “As you can see, these equations are very easy to remember – hold on, I’ve missed out a term…”
1990
From a groups lecture:
- “It’s a bit like probability except that it can go negative and the integral is not normally 1”
and “I can’t possibly tell you what this is – it’s a very unpleasant space”
Starting off a course early in the year:
- “The important thing to remember about this course is that it doesn’t actually mean anything.”
My, my! Here’s a helpful topology lecturer:
- “I’ll prove it with a diagram, and next time I’ll translate it into pictures.”
From a respected computation lecturer:
- “I don’t have an I.Q.”
and(in the middle of a lecture):
“What am I doing?”
An energetic lecturer:
- “Note that one must always have his sleeves rolled up for discussing this kind of thing.”
Tautology-of-the-term prize:
- “If you start off with a 72 elements and take away half, you’re left with the other half”
CAMBRIDGE
This file contains a list of quotes from people in mathematical or scientific circles at Cambridge.
NOTE: knowing some of my lecturers, this is very probably true! – SRV
1985
Overheard at a supervision :
- Supervisor: Do you think you understand the basic ideas of Quantum Mechanics ?
Supervisee: Ah! Well,what do we mean by “to understand” in the context of Quantum Mechanics?
Supervisor: You mean”No”,don’t you?
Supervisee: Yes.
The Tautology prize goes to the lecturer who uttered the gem:
- “If we complicate things they get less simple.”
This year’s modesty award is given for a phrase spoken by a lecturer after a rather difficult concept had just been introduced.
- “You may feel that this is a little unclear but in fact I am lecturing it extremely well.”
Overheard at last year’s Archimedeans’ Garden Party :
- “Quantum Mechanics is a lovely introduction to Hilbert Spaces !”
A Senior mathematician was asked which language he used for some of his computing. He replied that he used a very high level language: RESEARCH STUDENT
1986
From an algebra lecture:
- “A real gentleman never takes bases unless he really has to.”
From the same lecturer:
- “This book fills a well needed gap in the literature.”
And another encouraging book review:
- “This book is only for the serious enthusiast ; I haven’t read it myself.”
Two quotes from an electrical engineer (but former mathematician):
- “…but the four-colour theorem was sufficiently true at the time.”
- “The whole point of mathematics is to solve differential equations!”
And,as a contrast,a quote from a well known mathematician/physicist:
- “Trying to solve [differential] equations is a youthful aberration that you will soon grow out of.”
While on the subject how about this fundamental law of physics heard in General Relativity this year:
- “Nature abhors second order differential equations.”
A perplexing quote from a theoretical chemist:
- “…but it might be a quasi-infinite set.”
What is a “quasi-infinite set? Answers on a strictly finite postcard, please.
This year’s Modesty Prize is awarded to the lecturer who said :
- “Of course,this isn’t really the best way to do it.But seeing as you’re not quite as clever as I am – in fact none of you are anywhere near as clever as I am – we’ll do it this way.”
From the same lecturer :
- “Now we’ll prove the theorem. In fact I’ll prove it all by myself.”
And from a particle physics course :
- “This course will contain a lot of charm and beauty but very little truth.”
A comparison between the programming languages BCPL and BSPL :
- “Like BCPL you can omit semicolons almost anywhere.”
At the beginning of a course it is important to reassure the audience about how straight-forward the course is and about how good the lectures are going to be. But what about this quote from the beginning of the Galois Theory course:
- “This is going to be an adventure for you…and for me.”
Or this one from Statistical Physics:
- “At the meeting in August I put my name down for this course becase I knew nothing about it.”
In the middle of the Stochastic Systems course the lecturer offered this piece of careers advice:
- “If you haven’t enjoyed the material in the last few lectures then a career in chartered accountancy beckons.”
A lecturer of Linear Systems found the following on his board when he arrived one morning:
- “Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Greens’ functions are boring
And so are Fourier transforms. “
An engineer actually gave an answer to the question of “quasi-infinite” sets:
- “It’s one with more than ten elements.”
And they wonder why buildings fall over…
1987
From a supervisor :
- “Any theorem in Analysis can be fitted onto an arbitrarily small piece of paper if you are sufficiently obscure.”
No matter how elegant a course is there will always be occasions when a certain about of arithmetic is called for:
- “I just want you to have a brief boggle at the belly-busting complexity of evaluating this.”
A lecturer recently started to use RUNES in his course! His justification:
- “I need an immediately distinguishable character…so I’ll use something that no-one will recognise.”
From a Special Relativity lecture:
- “…and you find you get masses of energy.”
It’s nice to see the general-purpose ‘nobbling constant’ making a welcome return to Cambridge lectures:
- “This must be wrong by a factor that oughtn’t to be too different from unity.”
A flattering comment by a student for his GR supervisor:
- “She’s the only person in DAMTP who’s a real person rather than an abstract machine for doing tripos questions. “
A worrying thought from the same student:
- “Sex and drugs? They’re nothing compared with a good proof!”
A description of a lecturer:
- “G—-‘s a maniacal pixie!!!”
A less polite description of a famous (and notorious) mathematician:
- “I personally think he’s the greatest fraud since Cyril Burt!!” – any guesses ?
Renormalisation holds no fears for this lecturer of Plasma Physics:
- “…and divergent integrals need really sleazy cutoffs.”
In the true style of Cambridge Maths Tripos we have the following:
- “Proof of Thm. 6.2 is trivial from Thm. 6.9”
Can anybody guess the context in which the following is correct ?
- “This theorem is obviously proved as 13 equals 15.”
Why do mathematicians insist on using words that already have another meaning?
- “It is the complex case that is easier to deal with.”
And from various seminars in the King’s College Research Centre:
- “…the non-uniqueness is exponentially small.”
- “I’m not going to say exactly what I mean because I’m not absolutely certain myself.”
- “It’s dangerous to name your children until you know how many you are going to have.”
- “You don’t want to prove theorems that are false.”
And that last one wins the Sybil Fawlty Prize for “Stating the Bleeding Obvious”.
A slightly more honest version of “The student can easily see that…” :
- “If you play around with your fingers for a while, you’ll see that’s true.”
Suggestions are welcome on the meaning of this:
- “If it doesn’t happen at a corner, but at an edge, it nonetheless happens at a corner.”
– Eh ?
In a Complex Variables course a long, long, LONG time ago a lecturer wanted to swap the order of an integral and an infinite sum…
- “To do this we use a special theorem…the theorem that says that secretly this is an applied maths course.”
I never name my lecturers but he’s now head of the Universities Grant Commission. And a lot of universities would like to swap him for an infinite sum.
From an Algebra III lecturer :
- “If you want to prove it the simplest thing is to prove it.”
This year’s Honesty Prize goes to the natural sciences supervisor, who replied to a question with
- “Don’t ask me. I’m not a mathmo.”
And from Oxford…
- “This does have physical applications. In fact it’s all tied up with strings.”
1988
Good heavens, do I see a lecturer actually noticing the existence of his audience!
- “Was that clear enough? Put up your hand if that wasn’t clear enough. Ah, I thought not.”
Snobbery or what?
- “In the sort of parrot-like way you use to teach stats to biologists, this is expected minus observed.”
- “I too would like to know what a statistician actually does.”
- “We’re not doing mathematics; this is statistics.”
Also from statistics:
- “You could define the subspace topology this way, if you were sufficiently malicious.”
- “You mustn’t be too rigid when doing Fluid mechanics.”
Talk about ulterior motives…
- “This handout is not produced for your erudition but merely so I can practice the TeX word-processor.”
From 1A NatSci “Cells” course:
- “There are two proteins involved in DNA synthasis, they are called DNAsynthase 1 and DNAsynthase 3”
From a Part 2 Quantum Mechanics lecture:
- “Just because they are called ‘forbidden’ transitions does not mean that they are forbidden. They are less allowed than allowed transitions, if you see what I mean.”
From an IBM Assembler lecture:
- “If you find bear droppings around your tent, it’s fairly likely that there are bears in the area.”
A Biochemistry paper included an analysis of a previously undiscovered sugar named by the researchers “godnose” .
From a 1B Electrical Engineering lecture:
- “This isn’t true in practice – what we’ve missed out is Stradivarius’s constant.”
And then the aside:
- “For those of you who don’t know, that’s been called by others the fiddle factor…”
One from a 1A Engineering maths lecture :
- “Graphs of higher degree polynomials have this habit of doing unwanted wiggly things.”
- “Apart from the extra line that’s a one line proof.”
- “This is a one line proof…if we start sufficiently far to the left.”
A slight difficulty occured with geometry in an Engineering lecture one day:
- “This is the maximum power triangle.” said a lecturer, pointing to a rectangle.
This year the Computer Scientists seem to be in the running for the Honesty Award:
- “Sorry, I should have made that completely clear. This is a shambles.”
From a Computer Sciences Protection lecture:
- “Who should be going to this lecture? Everyone…apart from the third year of the two-year CompSci course.”
- “I don’t want to go into this in detail, but I would like to illustrate some of the tedium.”
Oh those poor CompScis….
- “I’m not going to get anything more useful done in this lecture, so I might as well talk.”
later followed by …
“Well there you are, one lecture with no useful content.”
Three from a NatSci Physics lecturer:
- “You don’t have to copy that down — there’s no wisdom in it — it only repeats what I said. “
- “We now wish to show that they are not merely equal but _the same thing_.”
- “And before I leave this subject, I would like to tell you something interesting.”
From a first year chemistry lecture some personal problems of the lecturer:
- “Before I started this morning’s lecture I was going to tell you about my third divorce but on reflection I thought I’d better tell my wife first.”
From a single research seminar at the King’s College Research Centre:
- “I’m sure it’s right whether it’s valid or not.”
- “WARNING: There is no reason to believe this will work.”