Sometimes the author of my calculus book is really snarky:
“If you do not find this problem silly you are missing a very important point.”
“To complete the orgy of variations on l'Hopital’s Rule…”
“Prove that Galileo was wrong.”
“Mathematicians like to pretend that they can’t even add, but most of them can when they have to.”
“(You can use l'Hopital’s Rule, but that would be silly.)”
“The mass of drudgery which this chapter necessarily contains is relieved by one truly first-rate idea.”
“A few examples have been picked with malice aforethought.”
“Rolle was one of the mathematicians who never accepted the new notions of calculus, … but on the whole history has been particularly kind to Rolle; his name has been attached to a much more general result … which forms the basis for the most important theoretical results of calculus.”
“(Your proof should begin: ‘This is a trivial consequence of the Mean Value Theorem because…’.)”
“After sending the manuscript for the first edition of this book off to the printer, I thought of a much simpler [proof]. It is fortunate that these pages had already been set, so that I couldn’t make these changes, because this ‘proof’ is completely fallacious.”
“Give yet another proof of this fact…”
“The following two problems provide still more practice at integration, if you need it (and can bear it).”
“With the exception of the last few paragraphs of the previous chapter, this book has presented unremitting propaganda for the real numbers.”
“The detailed examination of another construction [of real numbers] is recommended only for masochists.” (And later, in the solutions manual: “Since the detailed examination of other constructions of the real numbers was recommended only for masochists, detailed answers to the two problems in this chapter will not be given.”)
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