#stuffmycollegeprofessorsays

[stuffmyapteachersays]

On wearing sunglasses on overcast days

"If you're real cool, the sun is always shining."

[stuffmyapteachersays]

The mathematician's notion of beauty

"Brief is good. You don't want to crush somebody with all the details. You want to get to the key points, and be crisp. It's really nice if they're elegant. Now, that means clever. It's the mathematician's notion of beauty. Like you go to the art museum, and the artists will say, wow, that's a beautiful painting. In mathematics, you say, wow, that's an elegant proof. It's crisp, clever, short, to the point. And it's really the highest compliment you can get from a mathematician, anyway. And there's a lot of judgment that goes into that. Just like in art-- there's judgment over what is great art."

[stuffmyapteachersays]

“If you can break those crypto systems, well, you can’t rule the world but it’s close.”

[stuffmyapteachersays]

“People like to try to translate English into logical expressions, an enterprise that does not always work very well. Let’s try a simple example: “Either you won’t go skiing, or you will and there won’t be any snow.” Using proposition symbols skiing and isSnow, we create the logical expressions: skiing ⇔ ¬snow ¬skiing ∨ ¬snow I’m not really sure which was the speaker’s intent. I think the speaker was just trying to be ironic, and math doesn’t capture that real well.”

[stuffmyapteachersays]

""The project description must be brief (no more than 2 to 5 pages)" - The NSF (National Science Foundation) The logical meaning is unclear. Perhaps this means that the description should be anywhere between two to five pages. Or maybe it means at most two pages. Or maybe it means at most five pages. You'd think the NSF could be more clear."

[stuffmyapteachersays]

"Every year we have to take tests and one of the questions was "Professor Smith said something about a dumb hick in class. Is this a violation of university policy?" And apparently no. Dumb hicks are not a protected group."

[stuffmyapteachersays]

“I realize to any stranger walking into today’s lecture would be very confused. Or aroused. But we just won’t give them context. It’ll be fun.”

-Dr Simmers, standing under a board with the words “Penis Size” on it, followed by a chart of different races along the dotted line from large to micro. Context? Racial Steyotyping in Intro to Sociology

[stuffmyapteachersays]

“So how goes the chemical burn? Still eating your hand”

-my Biology Lab ta upon learning the milipede secreted HCN all over my hand