Math Professors' Quotes

If you read my last post, you can see that I quoted a sentence from this wonderful website. To be exact, it is a Tumblr blog containing submissions from people all around the world, keeping track of all the hilarious things their math professors said. Seriously, go check it out if you're a student, or you just love to see what educators say all the time.

This vector looks pretty wonderful so you deserve the full size version.

Of course, writing on something that you can read yourself is not what I usually like to do. Let me share a quote by my own lecturer instead.

She's my advanced mathematics lecturer, the kind of lecturer that really love teaching. I mean, as a student, you don't need to ask him or her whether they really like to teach - you can feel it. Their classes are extra enjoyable, and they won't mind explaining things to you over and over again, and they are extremely good in explaining. My previous business communication lecturer once said, "if you understand something well enough, you can explain it in 3 words", and I strongly agree with it. I remembered that I once asked her a pretty complex question, all she did was looked at it, "use the definition". When I came back with the definition of a differential of the equation, she perfectly explained how to use it and how the definition always work. That's definitely better than some lecturers I know that make things complicated when trying to explain them. You want one of the lecturers that does this? Me. If I ever become one.

So here's one of the short little stories that happened during her class. Learning calculus is like going into a maze but with a good guide leading the way, and you meet strange new creatures every corner that needs a different skill to counter it (yes, the definition always work, but sometimes it is a real pain in the ass to use it). There's one time we meet another new monster with some complex stuff, but there is a cute little rule that you can use to tame it. After introducing the rule, she continued, "so, after knowing the rule, what should we do with it?".

I expected her to use it to solve the latest questions on the handout. But.

"We prove it!" saying this with an extremely happy tone and swinging her body at the same time. Mind blown.

Damn, we all know that proves won't come out in exams. But, she really wants us to understand the (black) magic behind each rule and equation. Probably that actually makes us appreciate the amount of work and intelligence that went through the ugly times to make our lives easier, or at least that is what she hoped, or at least let us understand what is going on behind each and every thing we are memorizing. Until now, the only rule that she did not prove to use is the L'Hospital rule (in which she forgot and time does not allow it).

Each and every proof we get from her class blows our mind. This is no exception, except that her exceptional enthusiasm towards teaching students from the bottom up blows the mind twice. You know what miracle she reached? We never got bored with proofs. Meanwhile looking at linear algebra, we sleep every single time we see a proof.

Now I guess I know why she never looked old despite being over her 40s. If you always live with enthusiasm to do things you like and keep the mind afresh, the soul will always be young.

Alright, time to wrap it up. If you have some experiences that you feel like sharing regarding classes, tell me too!

--Lilacse