MAT 007 I News, Wreckreational Math

The 1995 Quotes Edition


The following quotations are unadulterated excerpts from math lectures given by Akcoglu, Hironaka, Kalai, McCool, Milman, Ray Ross, and Sottile.

"This book is worse than toilet paper."
"This is a game people play, that's how they get tenure."
"You could define a left-hand derivative at the endpoints, but that's sort of crap."
"We're three weeks into the course, we've covered 3/4 of the material, so we can go have a beer party."
"These handouts I give you, they are not souvenirs."

"This came by brain-warp."
"You can check this in the privacy in your own home."
"I'm postponing all the difficulties until the next term."
"We assume you don't know anything."
"Is a proposition better than a lemma or worse than a lemma? I don't know."
"[Fermat] may have been short, but I don't want to comment on his stature."
"Don't ask me anything about homology, I know nothing about homology."
"If you don't like it, you can forget it."
"I reserve the right to not do a problem because it's too boring."
"Sometimes, dirty proofs are better because one understands them better."

"... as a math student, I only learned calculus in grad school, because [as an undergrad] I was always taking courses like these [analysis]."
"I didn't have much of an undergraduate education in mathematics."
"I try to save time, but when I try to save time, I actually waste more time."
"In the time-honoured tradition of self discovery, here's what you do."
"We need to take two different sets, and then we get completely confused."

"... but this is bull****!"
"I just did something completely wrong."
"You won't find this in any book. It's not a good theorem... it's not a useful theorem."
"We skip proving this theorem... just draw picture."
"Let's leave this to the end of the proof, because I may make a mistake if I write it down now."
"Assume R is a principal ideal domain, because life is too tough otherwise."

"Yes... No. There is no reason."
"This is terrible, I'm going to flunk first year calculus!"
"You're older and no wiser when you're done."
"Are you comfortable with that? Yes, you are comfortable with that."
"How do we prove this? Well, we talk about it, but we don't actually prove it."
"It's just getting a little more vicious."

"Of course, philosophy is trivial."
"[He] doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground..."
"I'm addicted to unique factorization."
"There are finitely many points, maybe too many or three many."
"It's so simple, let me see if I can explain it."
"That's terrible... this is a disaster."

"... so that's Theorem 2, or 3, or something."
"That's why he's Gauss, and we're normal people."
"This proof is similar in spirit, but difficult in detail."
"If (2) was a well-ordering, life would be very different."
"I could probably write it better, but not this morning."
"Would you like a take home? You don't know what you're getting into."

"Sorry, I used gamma instead of alpha... no, gamma instead of lambda... no..."
"Of course, our notation is falling apart."
"It's a useless definition."
"You shouldn't get excited yet."
"A map is a map."

"Let me make up a notation here."
"... otherwise, if it is constant, then it is constant."
"... 2 is a nasty prime."
"This problem is very juicy."
"So I made the same mistake again [as last day]... what happened?"
"Of course, you learned that in the cradle."
"What we do is wonderful."
"The Legendre symbol is our friend."
"The hardest thing to do is count."
"I'm running out of time and energy."


Copyright © 1995 MAT 007 I News. All Rights Reserved.

Go back to the 007 News Information Page.

Return to the Department of Mathematics Home Page