"I don't have the answer to that question. If I did, I'd be more
famous."
"This was our first result on [Topic X]. Although, I didn't actually
state it."
"So, now we have appeased the transfinite God..."
I have paraphrased the following conversation, partly to protect the
identities of the innocent and the not so innocent, partly to save time:
Professor: So, how are we going to prove this?
Student: We could use method A.
Professor: Could we? Oh, yes... I suppose we could.
But it would be a lot more clear if we used method B. But, if you
want me to use method A, I'll use method A... [pause] No, I think
it might be clearer if I use B.
Student: I think you should do it however you're most comfortable.
Professor: Right, just for that, I'll use method A. [pause]
Actually, I'll use method B and you can do it using method A on your qual!
You may have noticed that these quotes are in chronological order within
paragraphs, but the paragraphs themselves are in anti-chronological order
(or you may not). Here is the "start" of the Berkeley quotes:
"So, we see this was really just a bogey man all along."
"Really, this is a dead person. A dead person that is constrained
only to do things he did when he was alive."
"I say it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it does make some
sense."
"n* may not have a scary hat on."
"At the moment it's serving as an example. Hopefully, by Monday,
it won't be."
"This is where I finish my glass of water, take a deep breath and answer
all those questions."
"I don't actually need that: it's just for psychological comfort."
In a pm lecture: "Good afternoon. Oh, actually, it's morning."
"Last time I saw him he was still alive."
"If you've ever thought about trying it probably the next thing you
thought about was not trying it and doing something else instead."
A new manipulation method, "If you kick the formula about a bit, you
get..."
Humbleness: "I seem to be in the lower orders of the food chain, that
pick up the small pieces of chalk off the floor that no-one else wants".
"And if that's not true, we've probably got our arithmetical notions
screwed up".
"I hope this concrete example helps you remember which way round these
go... oh, dear, I've put them the wrong way round".
Tutor: "Do you think you could write a question on the board for us?".
Student: "Sure. Do you want me to write an answer too?"
On the 7 digit fractional bound in the Kim-Sharidi theorem: "Whenever
you see a fraction that big you know some-one's worked hard and in this
case, I can assure you it was Kim".
"There is a text for this course, but in these lectures I'll basically
be covering everything that's in it, only better."
"I've given over 70 lecture courses but this one's a bit of a first
for me - I've never given one that starts at 5 before. I don't normally
do any work after lunch!"
"The syllabus explicitly forbids me from proving this, but the university
doesn't have much power over me because they don't pay me, so I will. But
beware: your heads may explode, you might
wake up in the middle of the night with an urge to kill your tutor,
or me. I thought that the fact that this is forbidden proof might make
it slightly more exciting for you."
(a paper aeroplane lands on the stage): "There is a very serious problem,
this plane doesn't have a flying licence."
"If you don't know what to call a theorem on this course, just call
it Gauss', because they're all called Gauss'"
"My excuse is that I'm jet-lagged: I spent 44 hours traveling yesterday.
That, and I'm stupid"
"When my secretary was preparing this slide, she said, 'that's very
pretty, what is it?' She was a little surprised when I told her it was
a heart attack?"
"This result was first proved by three people very dear to me: two
of them were my parents and one was my doctoral supervisor"
Eternal optimism: "I spent the first forty years of my life writing
'1' for the identity of a group, and now, I plan to spend the next forty
writing 'e'"
And pessimism: "I think we'll finish there; see you next week, if I'm
still alive."
Honesty: "I've written `integration by parts', but really I mean 'integration
by typing it into Maple'"
"Now you can all do something that some people do in my lectures all
the time, and close your eyes, while I fiddle about."
"I once went to the Maths Faculty of a Swedish university, which I
was very impressed to discover was on a street called Nonnegata. I was
less impressed when they told me that the street was so-called because
there used to be a nunnery there."
"There's a town in Australia called Curl Curl. Mathematicians have
written letters to there with the address `Grad Div minus Del Squared'."
"A 2-D blackboard is a poor approximation to three dimensional space."
"I've made a model, which my cat last night was very determined to
turn into an object with a trivial rotation group."
"Polyhedra are things that sit on their faces."
"You have to keep tossing until you get head."
"And it's very easy to see that this tells us that... actually this
is wrong, isn't it."
Some mathmos DO have friends, honest!: "And this would make our imaginary
physicist very happy indeed."
"If you give something a name, then sometimes you can do something
to do it."
These next three all from the same lecture!:
"I realise most of you won't know what liminf and limsup are, and it
is quite possible to do this proof without them, but I feel it's even less
transparent that way."
"This is mod.s stuff... or rather, it should be - it isn't."
[translation: mod.s are exams that maths students in Oxford must pass at
the end of their first year to be allowed to carry on]
"There's really no need for us to do this, but seeing as I've embarked
on it, I might as well finish it off"
"You could imagine that you're at some kind of hi-tech cocktail party,
where olives are dropped from a conveyor belt into a bowl of punch where
they randomly dissolve." Well, yes, we could imagine that, then again...
"And I'll leave you to flesh out this rather bald assertion. Actually,
if it's bald, I suppose it doesn't really need fleshing out, just thatching
or something..."
"This can be used to model situations like people going through the
education system, working their way up the hierarchy at work and then being
eliminated."
"This should be an easy calculation, which should mean I can get in
wrong on the board."
On a1: "That course tried to keep clear of abstractions like general
fields, which applied mathematicians might be allergic to."
The reason for the x>0 condition in Lin Prog: "You can't produce negative
amounts of drugs, unless you've got fancy accountants."
"The bottom line... no not that one, the one above it."
(The lecturer writes a comment on the board in German) Student:"Excuse
me, what does that mean?"; Lecturer: "Oh, it's German: you don't really
have an equivalent in English, so I'll just leave it like that."
Isn't it nice when lecturers go that extra mile for their students:
"I really had to argue to get all these lectures scheduled for 9am, you
know." (Apparently, the cleaners only clean the boards properly at the
end of the day, so the boards are always chalky for non-9am lectures)
"Anything positive gets us a little bit excited and 3 gets us more
excited than 1/2 by convention"
Lecturing is more dangerous than being lectured to: "So what has that
achieved, apart from getting chalk in our eyes? Actually, that was just
me, you didn't have to do that bit"
Don't you just love enthusiastic lecturers?:
"Now shout, "NOOO!!!!!"
"Boy, are they continuous. I bet you've never seen anything so continuous
in all your life... except constant functions"
"I once fell asleep in a lecture, but it was OK because I kept on talking!"
"I call this the graph of twiddles, but I've never met any-one else
that does, so don't you go calling it that, because no-one will understand
you."
And finally, a serious quote on reading other people's notes: "It's
not enough to just read the notes: you've got to hear the music."