Mathematical Musings Part II

Things I've said in class, part II:

• If you rewrite the problem first, you only have two embedded functions, rather than three, which will give you a shorter chain, but it’s not like we’re trying to lock up our bicycle to a pole, so we really don’t need a long chain. (on use of the chain rule.
• Since I went to A&M for two years, I feel like I’ve earned the right to tell Aggie jokes, although I don’t get half of them.
• Is it going to rain today? I don’t know. That all depends on the weather.
• Sin and Cosine are considered to model Harmonic motion. Think about the two graphs on the same axis, offset from each other by Pi halves. They look like two playful dolphins harmoniously frolicking in the peaceful sea. . . . or they don’t.
• So the graph of tangent x reveals that it is monotonic increasing, but is it one-to-one? Heck no. Not only is each y-value two-timing with x-values, but three-timing, four-timing, infinity-timing. She’s seeing so many different x-values, she has developed quite a reputation.
• I don’t know where my Hall pass is. Here, take this rubber band. If anyone asks, say it belongs to Mr. Korpi.
• Now we have to shift the graph of cosine to the right by 1.333 seconds. If we had happened up on the system 1.333 seconds earlier, the phase shift would have been zero, and the equation would have been easier to find. The moral of the story: DON’T BE TARDY.
• It’s my mousetrap. (when a student asked what an old computer mouse tied into a loop laying on the floor was.)
• So the problem says, “ A person of weight W is standing on an oak board on the incline.” Does any body in here weigh W?
• To a topologist, a coffee mug, a doughnut, and a trombone are the same thing.
• I’m here every morning at 6:00 if you need to come in for help. I love the smell of mathematics in the morning.
• Now for this problem, the information is hidden within the words. We have to make our own juice here, and ‘squeeze’ the information out.
• So how are we going to tell our calculator to do that? Do we speak into it like a cell-phone?
• You need to be wise in the use of your calculator. Don’t use it as a hammer. It will work, but is greatly missing the true powerful potential and purpose of its original design.
• Do it in your head! What if you were stranded on an island with only your textbook, without a calculator and pencil.
• You there! No mental loitering.
• We can classify 1^st degree polynomials as straight curves. These are very simple to graph, very hard to throw, and even harder to hit.
• A frown is nothing more than a parabola turned upside-down.
• The Ambiguous case is for Side Side Angle. Since it requires the most work, requiring you to set up a quadratic formula, it has become known as the ‘pain in the Angle Side Side’ case.
• The first thing you do when you approach a problem like this is to introduce yourself. Get comfortable with the task at hand. Say, “Hello problem.” It’s a good way to break the ice.
• Yes, you may go to the bathroom. Just don’t do it here.
• P=e^(rt). The shampoo equation. Used by more bankers than the other lesser equations.
• We count in base 10 because our number system evolved from counting on our fingers. This is the same reason why chickens count in base four.
• I really like the new windows in my classroom. I have a great view of the neighboring apartments. Last year I never had the opportunity to watch so many people take their dogs for a poop.
• And we give this ratio a very specific name. Not a name like Fred, George, or Biff, but rather a choice four-letter word starting with ‘S.’ We call it Sine.
• Some days you’re the Radical, some day you’re the Radicand.
• Some days, especially when it’s overcastted, I just like to wear a little Vitamin C. (defending his bright yellow shirt to students.
• Was that ironic, oxymoronic, or just moronic?
• It is easier to adverbialize an adjective than it is the adjectivize an adverb.
• Just because you haven’t met anyone like me before doesn’t mean that I don’t exist.
• As scary as reading your Halloween stories in the dark may be, any terror is negated by how silly the idea of reading them with a flashlight is.
• Now for number diez y dos, also known as doce.
• The test will be similar to the review . . . Not congruent.
• Better late than never or early or on time.
• I’m not really that odd. My eccentricity is closer to zero than one.
• When I was in school, we used to separate all multiple items in a list with commas. For instance, the sentence, “Tom, Dick, and Harry went to the store,” had commas everywhere. Now a days, you don’t need a comma between Dick and Harry. That just doesn’t look right to me. Without the comma, it just looks like Dick and Harry are a single unit.-----(pause, then biggest laughter of the year.)
• I don’t know when you’ll ever use this stuff, but if you never learn it, the answer is never.
• Sure, Einstein failed high school math, but it wasn’t because he failed to understand math.
• An integral part of Calculus is differentiating between the derivative and the integral.
• Negative numbers are so depressing. Be positive, I always say.
• The difference between implicit and explicit is this. If I said, “Gee, you know, I kind of wish that the grades were better on the test. I really think y’all could have done better and I expect more from you. It really want the grades better . . . “ , that would be implicit. But if I said, “STUDY, DAMMIT.” That would be explicit.