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| 7/15 |
| 2007/2/25-3/1 [Computer/Theory] UID:45816 Activity:moderate |
2/24 For those w/ a math interest KCSM (Channel 17/43.1) in the Bay
Area is airing a biography of Paul Erdos this Wednesday, 28 Feb.
\_ After the program, I dans@soda, will present a comprehensive
critique here in the soda motd.
\_ Really? I mean, Paul Erdos rocks and all, but, if
you're tuning in to the program, you already know that.
\_ Really? I mean, Paul Erdos rocks and all, but, if you're
tuning in to the program, you already know that.
P.S. Don't impersonate people on the motd. It's lame.
And if you're going to do it, at least get the details
right. -dans
\- VFR Jones, of the "Jones Polynomial" fame is giving a
talk on March 7 5pm at the Bancroft Hotel. dans will
follow it up with a talk on the HOMFLY polynomial.
On a different subject, Martin Jay, will be giving
a talk on Lying in Politics [he's not going to say what
you might expect, unless maybe you know him and read his LRB?
essay on this] on Feb 28 5pm Bancroft Hotel. Martin Jay is
not a normal person ... I think he has a photographic memory.
\_ Heh. I took Math 1B from Jones. Teaching lower-division
math classes made him *pissed*. -dans
\_ You really enjoy making threads tack so they are
about you, dont you?
\_ So then don't become a professor. Use your super
math skills in industry. People who become profs
and then get mad when they have to teach are idiots.
I'm sure even his dumb ass had to take 1B or
equivalent once upon a time and someone taught it
to him.
\_ Don't hate the player, hate the game: Berkeley math
doesn't even ask about teaching on their faculty
job applications. The department doesn't care, so
why should individual faculty?
\- what is ironic is one of the most notorious
math profs, Hurricane Wu, cares deeply about
teaching ... and even writes papers on how
to teach math. ob:
http://soda.berkeley.edu/~echeng/hurricane_wu
\_ Dude, were you abused by a theoretical math
professor? I mean, Vaughn Jones is a Fields
Medalist, somehow I suspect the satisfaction and
rewards with being, literally, one of the worlds
greatest mathematicians probably outweighs the
annoyance of having to teach Math 1B once every few
years. -dans
\_ And then these sorts typically take out their
frustration and annoyance on their undergrads
which is no good for anyone involved. They
should just hire non-prof. teachers to take care
of the lower division stuff.
\_ I think you are mis-diagnosing the problem.
It's not that 1a/b are elementary, it's that
they are not really math classes in the sense
that mathematicians practice math. These
classes exist to teach scientists and engineers
very useful practical skills, none of which
are relevant for a working mathematician. The
way for them to be taught right is for people
who acctually use calc to teach them, i.e.
science and engineering professors. The reason
this rarely happens is political: math
departments get money based on the huge
enrollment, and don't want to ever lose that
money to physics, EE, or ME or whatever.
At a school other than Berkeley, they actually
had applied physics profs teaching the 50a/b
series, and those sections were waaaay over
enrolled, while only people with a schedule
conflict would sign up with the math guy.
\_ The CS department has introduced CS 70 as
a replacement for Math 55 (formerly 50a/b)
for basically this reason. The math dept.
didn't care much for 55 since math people
don't take it, so it was generally not well
supported. It's really a class for CS types,
so it was moved to CS. -gm
\- curious point: among non-medical faculty
VFR Jones is one of the highest paid profs
in the uc system. it's a strange outlier.
\_ He's a Field's Medalist for pete's sake.
If that doesn't earn him a ridiculously
high salary, what will?
-dans
\- dood, you have to stop assuming
everybody else is stupid. uc has a
bunch of other nobels and fields
medalists and obviously i was
noting VFRJ compared to them, not
a lecturer in comp lit. it might be
interesting to see TTAO's recent
salary curve. in addition to prestige
there is mkt price/op cost, and how much
$$$ they bring into the university. e.g.
kahan has a turing award but i bet
patterson brings in more $$$. and i
didnt say it was ridiculously high.
i'm focusing on it's outliernss, not
it's magnitude.
\_ But he's a *field medalist*!!!@!1111
-!dans
\_ Why do you think I'm assuming
everyone else is stupid?
Insecure, and maybe a little
irrational possibly, but not
stupid. -dans
\_ See, this, right here, is why
no one likes you.
\_ No, that right there is what
I do to prevent having to
put up with fuckheads like
you in my social circle.
The precise term for this
is "standards".
-dans
\_ Hint: you can't get out
of the hole by continuing
to dig.
\_ Hint: I don't need
the affirmation of
anonymous motd hosers
to feel secure in my
sense of self. -dans
We're gonna need a bigger shovel... _/
\_ I'll take backhoes for $200, Alex!
-dans
\_ HOly fucking crap I want to buy a
backhoe for 200 dollars.
\_ try ofarrell && larkin
\_ Could you please provide
more information? thanks!
-guy who wants backhoe
\_ The $200 back hoe's
are usually Transvestites.
\_ dans, a couple of us got a
good laugh out of your use of
"theoretical math professor".
keep up the inadvertent humor. |
| 7/15 |
|
| soda.berkeley.edu/~echeng/hurricane_wu -> soda.berkeley.edu/~echeng/hurricane_wu/ The Book of Wu by Peter "Slappy" Rjinswandi being the recounting of the math class i took my first semester of college taught by a clinically insane man named wu. He stood before us a little, unassuming old Chinese man that looked like the actor that either plays the old wise monk or the old evil ass-kicking martial-arts monk. This would turn out to be an all too fitting description. Through a thick accent that can only be approached by speaking with six marbles in your mouth, he began to speak. For a few minutes I needed translations from a Chinese girl sitting next to me, but then suddenly I began to understand him utterly and completely. I knew then that he was possessed with a genius that transcended good and evil and came out on the other side. I wrote down his teachings, and give them to you, hoping that you will see the light just as I did my freshman year. In his first lecture he embarked on a ten-minute digression involving Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. This was somehow related to how to let calculus become instinctive. "You want to get to the point where you don't have to think anymore, but it takes a lot of thinking to get there. " He proceeded to explain how so, but it actually made me more confused. He told us that he didn't believe in using a curve, which in a math class roughly translates to saying, "You're all going to die. Basically he knew we were all morons, and it was his job to prove it to us. He did things in exams that should not have been done to humans, and then during the post-mortem after he graded it he would say things about our performance like: "It was not as good as I hoped, but this is to be expected." But he always wanted better for us: "You cannot be ignorant, at least not for your whole life." Sometimes, though, our stupidity would drive him to rant: "You are old enough to vote, you decide the future of the nation. Once after another failure-ridden exam, he told us what he wanted from us. It involved yet another Peter O'Toole anecdote, but I'll just give you the final line from the fifteen-minute adventure: "I just want you to try a little bit better." He was almost sad when two hundred pairs of eyes would just stare at him blankly after he asked us a question: "Are you shy?" or, "You know it and just don't want to tell me, is that it?" I thought he was trying to be supportive when he said after we got an answer wrong: "First time not so good, don't worry, you have lots of times." But it was actually more of a comment on our relative value as human beings, as he said once when embarking on a long proof before the weekend: "Well, it's Friday, and you have nothing better to do." He would start to write a long, involved proof using several chalkboards (and once the wall when he ran out of room) and all he would tell us at the outset was: "You must not ask me what I am doing." Apparently he was trying to protect us from the truth he knew we couldn't handle: "To prove this would confuse, not enlighten you." "Symbols fly right and left on the chalkboard and that is not good for you." "'x' would confuse you so if you don't like it, don't look at it." " That's when I knew he was a messiah in black socks and Birkenstocks. He had paranoid delusions from time to time that he was more than happy to share: "I try to minimize my use of colored chalk. The less I use, the less I have to erase, the less dust there is, and I have this feeling colored chalk is toxic." Usually, though he would just harmlessly ramble: "There are infinitely many, there are uncountably many... Luckily when he teetered on the brink he usually came right back down into the land of reality, or at least somewhere in the vicinity. Not too surprisingly, we were wrong, but before telling us that he said: "Okay, let majority rule. One of the many things he taught us was what math was really about: "There is a cheap way out, and that's what we're here for." "You have to detect a pattern, write it down and get on with the rest of your life." "If you can't think of another solution, it must be true." It didn't take long to realize he wasn't trying to teach us math - he was teaching us life. And then of course there was the most important lesson I ever learned: "When you have luck in life, you don't need to learn anything." |