Quotes from Spring 1994
Instructor quotes
Here are actual things that professors said in the four classes I attended
this semester:
- It's a simple problem. Simple enough to be on a test. 1-11-94
- Now this norm has nothing to do with the character on Cheers. It's a
mathematical property. 1-11-94
- No prizes for guessing where Taylor's Theorem got its name. It was named
after a guy named Theorem. 1-13-94
- I've got this joke I've just got to tell you. 1-13-94
- Never believe anything until you've proven it. 1-13-94
- I've got to bring in a little philosophy, since I have a doctor of
philosophy. 1-13-94
- We could not deduce that just now, but we can now. 1-20-94
- At Princeton our diplomas are written in Latin so nobody knows
what they say. 1-25-94
- There is something special about this number. The Greeks
discovered these. 1-25-94
- I've described what I just said. 1-25-94
- When I say Greeks I don't mean the guys from the fraternities.
I mean the guys from Greece. 1-25-94
- I'm sure all of you have a life and don't want to hear about this,
but I didn't have a life in grad school... 1-25-94
- As engineers, we like to see 4 or 5 significant figures...
Ooo ... Wow! 1-27-94
- Remember back from kindergarten calculus... 1-27-94
- Wow this is even more cool isn't it... or is it cooler? 1-27-94
- This is so good it's bad good. 1-27-94
- This function is so nasty that it even looks like a stingray. 2-1-94
- Doing a good proof is like reading _The_Firm_ and enjoying the
unexpected twist at the end. 2-1-94
- You can multiply it all out, or if you are really smart, like me,
you can just look in the book. 2-1-94
- Wow, would you look at that! How do you like that? 2-3-94
- Some people are just walking CRC handbooks. 2-3-94
- Did I just sound like Bush there? `Long--bad, round--good.' 2-3-94
- This theorem is more general than in your book. That's your reward
for coming to class. 2-8-94
- You can iterate until the cows come home and it's still invertible.
2-8-94
- You don't get that? Come see me and we'll talk about
you transferring. 2-15-94
- Is this perfectly clear to anyone? Please put up your hand. 2-15-94
- Welcome to Fantasy Island. 2-17-94
- When you see a theorem with two names with a hyphen in the middle, like
Hestenes-Stiefel. It usually isn't that the first married the second.
2-17-94
- These guys are not like small fries, these guys are big wigs. 2-17-94
- Student: Why shouldn't H_(n-1) = H_n?
- Prof: Why should it be? 2-22-94
- Prof: Does that answer your question?
- Student: No.
- Prof: It's not important. 2-22-94
- This is kind of an abuse of language, but hey, what the heck. We're
engineers. We abuse language all the time. 3-3-94
- Physicists argue about why physics is so nice. 3-3-94
- He's quite old...Old and neglected I am told. (About some
famous scientist). 3-3-94
- This problem is obvious because it involves money. 3-15-94
- These are hard to draw but easy to do stuff on. 3-15-94
- We've got to have a break now. Union rules. 3-15-94
- Before we end let me show you something very funny...
Well it's not really funny, it's a property of this matrix. 3-15-94
- It's just an exercise. When you go jogging, it's not like you
are trying to get somewhere. 3-22-94
- Actually Eric, you're all wrong. Alpha is not politically correct
anymore, we use y 3-24-94
- "We will show"--That's whimpy, so "We shall show..." 3-24-94
- Now the big question is why in the world would anyone do that?
Do they have nothing better to do or what? 4-5-94
- I'm sorry, let me say it again. Let me say it again. 4-5-94
- Chain rule. Hey, we haven't heard that word for a long time. 4-7-94
- I'm not going to prove this. It's too hard because none of us
remember our undergrad calculus. 4-7-94
- I can see some looks that say, "Why can't there be a tangent plane...
4-7-94
- If you're a little particle and you're trying to maneuver a
little spaceship... 4-12-94
- Okay, you know what I mean. 4-14-94
- You don't have to look at [the stopped clock] to know we are in a black
hole around here. 4-19-94
- Isn't it interesting that our eyes evolved to see right where the Sun's
radiance peaks. 1-14-94
- It's almost like I'm trying to convince you that what we are going to
do can't be done. 1-24-94
- [NASA] spent their $225 million to launch [Landsat 6] into the ocean.
1-26-93
- That's the kind of argument that should happen in a bar. You're not
going to resolve it, so you may as well enjoy it. 2-21-94
- At least 50% of the Remote Sensing literature is junk. 2-21-94
- Oh no, no, no. That would be too easy. The Professor's job is to
maximize the agony of the students. 2-25-94
- That's lawyer talk. That's courtroom proving, not proving proving.
3-2-94
- Well, that's the sermon for today. Shall we pray? 3-18-94
- A lot of good people bent their swords on that problem because
it's tough. 3-18-94
- This is the gospel according to old what's his name. 3-28-94
- This is a standard trick that engineers use to weasel out of problems
they can't solve. 4-15-94
- Engineers get good at making compromises. 4-15-94
- At this point you've got to step back and say "Gee, we've got
problems." 4-15-94
- Us [sic] EE's have a supposition that there is no such thing as
a Mechanical Engineer. 4-18-94
- Politicians have a right to live I suppose. There must be some use
for them in society. Then again, that's an assumption that may or
may not be true. 4-22-94
- Old man Edison had a lot of trouble making the first lightbulb. 4-22-94
- Students and faculty are sort of like humans, they put off things until
they actually need to be done. 4-28-94
- You must check your weapons at the door, but you could come see me.
4-28-94
- It is 30 miles from Danville to Martinsville, but it's 28 miles from
Martinsville to Danville. 1-12-94
- How do you know when to fumble around for the light cord that turns on
the light in your head, or when it's just not there? 1-12-94
- N squared gets out of town fast, it leaves N in the dust. 1-12-94
- Any mathematicians in the class, please hold back the jeers. 1-19-94
- N to the billionth-billionth-Carl-Sagan power. 1-19-94
- Try not to get overwhelmed by the simplicity here. 1-27-94
- We keep putting problems until they get small enough so even
we can solve them. 1-31-94
- This is a graduate course, so the answer is "it depends." 2-7-94
- Let's get to the big picture. The big blank picture for now. 2-11-94
- This is when the smoke starts coming out of the androids head. 2-14-94
- Z on S_Z implies Z on S_Z fails to halt. Android drops dead.
Roll credits. 2-14-94
- It's so nice outside. Thanks for coming. 2-18-94
- I'm a 3-D instructor. I'm not a 100-D guy. 2-18-94
- When you find an answer that simple, now that's something to
rave about. 2-18-94
- Class is canceled Friday, so if you need a nice quiet place Friday
afternoon, be here. 2-28-94
- Magic... that's all it is... magic. 2-28-94
- If you don't like the answer, change the question. Everything is
an answer to something. 3-21-94
- Problem three was a bloodbath. 3-23-94
- This is figure 26.3 and in my opinion, they don't dent your
noggin enough. 4-8-94
- Never fail to avoid working hard by working smart. 4-13-94
- Everyone has bad days, right? I'm likely to have quite a few of them
here. 1-10-94
- Any questions? Are you bored yet? [To a specific student] Are YOU bored
yet? 1-10-94
- Obviously, the right side is a pain in the butt. 1-10-94
- I'll probably switch notation 42 times this semester. 1-10-94
- I don't know why I'm doing this, maybe I'm just showing off. 1-10-94
- This is getting boring, right? 1-12-94
- I love grad students, so much better than EE 201. 1-14-94
- That will take some thought, but since I haven't thought about this
class yet... 1-14-94
- How would you know this without going over to the math department
and taking two years of classes, or something stupid like that? 1-14-94
- The fact that I'm either going to prove or blow off, depending on
how long I twiddle my thumbs is... 1-14-94
- I've got a homework assignment here. I'm not too proud of it. 1-19-94
- If your dad was a farmer, he'd kill you. 1-19-94
- We fit this model that some egg head at the USDA came up with... 1-19-94
- Here I'm having a crisis in confidence again. 1-19-94
- I'm not sure how much of this you want to see. Aah, I'll give it
to you anyway. 1-19-94
- Actually, that's such a dumb problem, sorry I assigned it. 1-21-94
- You're getting just in the time lecture preparation. 1-21-94
- I'll accept the fact that I'm wrong half the time. 1-21-94
- Hopefully these lectures, in an asymptotic sense, converge to something
useful. 1-21-94
- What are you cats laughing about? 1-21-94
- Prof: I have this inferiority complex that you look bored.
- Student: Lost is more like it.
- Prof: Well, it doesn't matter anyway. 1-21-94
- I promised to do that right. Well... right is relative. 1-24-94
- If you have questions, don't be afraid to raise your hand. I
may even look to see if that's the case. 1-24-94
- Let's write it down and see what sort of stupidity arises from it.
1-24-94
- Why is least squares cool? Least squares is cool because it can do
this... 1-24-94
- If life is very good, we will prove that. 1-24-94
- I'm sorry, I didn't work the problem, I didn't really read it. 1-26-94
- Everything practical reduces to matrix equations. 1-26-94
- I'd give unmentional things for a piece of chalk 3 inches long. 1-27-94
- I just can't deal with the fact that there are more than
50 people here. 1-27-94
- You're squinting your eyes. 1-27-94
- If I wasn't so bored with this, I'd keep lecturing, instead I'll give
you homework on it. 1-27-94
- Now finally the linear estimation monkey is off our back. 1-27-94
- My hand is killing me, so I won't write all that stuff I
just said down. 1-31-94
- You start on the homework yet? It really doesn't matter. You'll get
solutions anyway. 2-2-94
- Well I'm right in the middle of a thought, not a great thought, but
let's cherish it nonetheless. 2-2-94
- I've tried to sell my thoughts and the market is poor. 2-2-94
- Why are you laughing? Just kidding. Sometimes I'm so sensitive.
2-4-94
- I have a few theorems that I probably won't prove. Well, I don't have
the proofs here so that pretty much takes care of it. 2-4-94
- We'll start an example just to show that this isn't completely
content free and sinful. 2-4-94
- Sure, you can have til Friday [to turn in the homework]. Tell your friends
so everyone knows. It's the right thing to do. 2-7-94
- What am I doing? Oh, okay. Everyone following me? No? You idiots.
2-7-94
- I would not have had had to have had that wide a range. 2-7-94
- I don't know how to spell it. I guess it doesn't matter. 2-7-94
- Now consider the special case and consider what a pain in
the butt it is. 2-7-94
- (A couple minutes after class should have finished) Anybody have anywhere
to go? Stuff you want to watch on TV? 2-7-94
- I've given many people hints and I want to make sure the hints are evenly
distributed. 2-9-94
- This next assignment will put hair on your chest. Oh, you've got hair on
your chest? Well don't show me anymore man. 2-9-94
- In conclusion of this momentary thought I'm having... 2-9-94
- Maximum a posteriori, what, were these guys a bunch of Latin freaks
or something? 2-9-94
- If you see gross injustices done [in the grading], you can come see me.
Otherwise leave me alone. 2-11-94
- I've heard very nasty things about jail. 2-11-94
- From now on concave and convex are the same thing for today. 2-11-94
- I guess what I'm saying is, "I don't know if you want to do anything
if Dirty Harry is pointing a gun at you." 2-11-94
- Well, shyzacripe. 2-11-94
- You'd get tired of flipping coins all the time, so you'd probably want
to automate it. 2-14-94
- (Running over again) It's your job to stick up... If you want to watch
the Beverly Hillbilies, now's your chance. 2-14-94
- Thanks for hanging out with me. 2-14-94
- I've been irregular lately, maybe that's why I've been cranky. 2-16-94
- Why are you so dressed up? You're not going to get a job. 2-16-94
- I can't believe that if we put a man on the moon we can't do this,
but it may be hard. 2-16-94
- I'm not going to do the proof. It's not that it's hard, I'm just bored
with it. 2-18-94
- That's a topic for greater minds than mine. 2-18-94
- Either you or I is confused here. Let's assume you are confused.
2-21-94
- I don't know if it was a good idea to tell you that. 2-21-94
- We could spend the whole semester on... well, people spend their whole
lives on this stuff. 2-23-94
- This is imminently important and easier too. You can't beat that.
2-23-94
- This may get arbitrarily grotesque. 2-23-94
- I'm not underbarring vectors so tough!... I'll do it once for you.
2-23-94
- Some of the solutions are ones I did when I was a student so that should
motivate you to be as great as me. 2-25-94
- I don't know why I'm doing this, except to torture you. 2-25-94
- We can go on with these examples ad nauseum, and we will. 2-25-94
- Hot dig. This is our special day when we get to see whether the chalk
I hid is still there...cool. 2-28-94
- I didn't go through it cause I'm lazy. 2-28-94
- Any questions? It's okay to ask them... well, pretty much. 2-28-94
- Well let's compute it. Hey? Won't that be fun? 2-28-94
- I could be wrong. No, I know I'm not. 2-28-94
- You scared me man. Don't ever ask me another question. 2-28-94
- The generalizations of this are obvious. The problems generally
get harder. 3-2-94
- We are embroiled in an example and I'm getting sick of it so I'm going
to blow canopy. 3-4-94
- Well marvelous you say... 3-4-94
- Then we'll go back to estimation, Thank you Lord. 3-4-94
- Make your life better whenever you run into trouble. That's one thing
you should be sure to do. 3-4-94
- Okay, so I answered a non-question. 3-4-94
- Are there any questions on that? [Guy raises hand] Aah, shoot. You know
that when I ask that I don't really want you to ask me a question. 3-14-94
- How smooth is it? Smooth as you need. 3-14-94
- If I give you something that looks really hard on a test, you get scared,
you wet your pants, but if you boil through it, you find I'm
just a whimp. 3-14-94
- Yes, it's a 2 hour test. Tell your friends. 3-14-94
- If I could speak in italics I would. 3-16-94
- We don't want you to sit here with a pile of crap two feet high in front
of you. 3-14-94
- I spent 5 hours on a couple of problems to find an easy way to do them
so I could stick you with them on the test, but I couldn't find an
easy way to do them. 3-16-94
- I probably can't answer your questions, that's a good way to get rid of
questions, plead stupidity and move on. 3-16-94
- I heard of a PhD student who got offered $70,000, so you'll probably want
to make an assumption on the problem and then graduate. 3-16-94
- That's kind of interesting, I guess... maybe? 3-23-94
- Have your lawyer send me a letter. 3-23-94
- There's a whole lot to say about this. We'll see how far we can go before
we get sick of it. 3-23-94
- I haven't graded your tests yet. Actually, I'm not even sure where
they are. 3-23-94
- Here's a theoremoid... 3-23-94
- I don't know, I guess we could call up Scharf (the author of our text) and
ask him what was on his mind when he wrote that. 3-23-94
- When you want something to go to heck, go to the Cauchy. 3-23-94
- I should get a teaching award for this (using the overhead projector).
3-23-94
- I should know why I don't get teaching awards right? 3-23-94
- And likewise, this Cramer Rao Bound thing should make you feel warm.
3-35-94
- (Guy in next room is sharpening a pencil for a couple of minutes.) Let's
drag him out and pommel him to a bloody pulp. 3-25-94
- That's a good guess. It didn't work on the test like that...
it's too bad. 3-25-94
- Has anyone seen this stuff before? (No.) This is a case of the blind
leading the blind. 3-28-94
- I just want you to know up front that I don't know what
I'm talking about. 3-28-94
- This is difficult if you can't tell the difference between a boy and a girl.
This is particularly difficult for engineers. 3-28-94
- Any questions cause I'm going to blow the EM algorithm canopy. 3-30-94
- This is the Law of Large Numbers, this is the Central Limit Theorem and
we'll give a really bad proof for both. 3-30-94
- In other words, I am so unhappy with the proof, I don't want any evidence
written down that you can use as evidence against me. 3-30-94
- You pick up a grad text and you're in Orlet space and don't have a
clue what it is. 3-30-94
- We're going to do this a different way, so x out you notes and we'll
start over. 4-1-94
- Sorry I'm late, I forgot I had class. 4-1-94
- Define pitchfork of y_k ... 4-1-94
- The gist of the proof is... What is the gist, for crying out loud.
4-1-94
- You guys with the bread, the questions about life, I'm loosing it.
4-1-94
- I need to think my life is worthwhile. So let that be our first
assumption. 4-1-94
- If I give you a proof on a test, it will be one you can do, provided
you do better than you did on the last test. 4-1-94
- I would have probably died on the last test, but at least I would have
died with some respect. 4-1-94
- Prof: I hope you can take a joke.
- Student: I hope you can take a joke on your evaluations.
- Prof: To be honest with you, I do quite often. 4-1-94
- You probably... Ah, you dang should. I don't know why I say probably.
I'm the one making the rules here. 4-4-94
- This is just a special case of the more general problem where you
don't know anything. 4-4-94
- You should ask any questions that come to mind, other than "what is this
all good for?" I don't want to hear that one again. 4-4-94
- You don't need a complex exponential, just the regular mom and dad
high school exponential is fine. 4-6-94
- This is not worth dwelling on since it doesn't look like anyone's doing
the homework anymore. 4-6-94
- Let's stop for a minute, let that anger and pain leave your arm.
4-6-94
- Since I haven't done my taxes or graded the tests (we took about a month
earlier), I probably won't have the solution [to the next homework set]
ready soon. 4-8-94
- Before I prove this, I'll just say a couple things to try
to encourage you. 4-8-94
- Okay, don't go anywhere. 4-8-94
- If you're a control weasel, you would know that already. 4-8-94
- Things are looking up. The government owes me money and from the looks
of your tests, so do you. 4-11-94
- We use the Lemma and then we can say, cough, cough, cough, excuse me.
4-11-94
- Questions? Okay, go away. 4-11-94
- I'm grading the test. It wasn't bad... well it was a disaster, but I did
see a silver lining. 4-13-94
- An approach that is ultimately doomed to failure has some nobleness in it...
it's something I may have tried. 4-13-94
- (To one student) I've been grading your exam. It's going pretty well for
you. It's interesting... I don't know if I can give you many points for
it, but it's interesting. 4-13-94
- Now we're done. We have the answer, but we don't know squat. 4-13-94
- It's all there in front of you so we could cancel classes and go, but
we won't. 4-13-94
- They use capital triangle, delta I think it's called. 4-13-94
- (Points to an equation) There's a lot of evil stuff in here. 4-13-94
- Don't blame me for the terminology. I'm just the messenger. 4-15-94
- Let me erase the board so I don't make that little janitor lady
mad at me. 4-15-94
- Consider the equation... actually it's kind of cute. 4-18-94
- That will not be on the exam. I've learned my lesson. There will be
new lessons, no doubt. 4-18-94
- I got so excited, my notes are out of order. 4-18-94
- You guys are smart. You ask a lot of questions. Maybe that's why we
haven't covered any ground in here. 4-18-94
- You would only know this if you were in EE 602, but by the sounds of it,
you may not even then know it. 4-18-94
- No, no, no, that's not what we're doing at all. Pardon me,
pardon me to death. 4-18-94
- Oh, I blew it, but let's understand why it doesn't matter. 4-18-94
- You guys are really with it. 4-18-94
- You with me? Just you two nuts are with me. You're the only ones...
I'm sorry, I take it back. 4-18-94
- That's the way I started out and that's the way I'm going to end,
but I don't know how much more I'm going to say about that because
I'm sure you're all sick of it. 4-22-94
- It's new, and that's the meaning of the word "new." 4-22-94
- That bothered me for some time too... Until I started teaching this class,
and now nothing bothers me. 4-22-94
- The reason that proposition 5 is cool is this: It
implies proposition 6. 4-22-94
- An affine function of affine functions is affine. Thus it is affine
and that which was to be shown has been shown. 4-22-94
- Let me look [at my notes] and see if there is anything worth talking
about... nah. 4-22-94
Student quotes
Here are actual things that my students wrote in their reports this semester:
- EE 267--Report Lab 5, Feb. 25, 1994:
- As the summary question is only worth two points, and as spring break is
just around the corner, I am sorry to say that I must simply 'rip' this
part of the lab write-up to prepare for the events that will occur in the
near future.
- EE 267--Report Lab 5, Feb. 25, 1994:
- The only think that really took much time was the decision of what inputs
to use as the select lines. Otherwise, the lab was cool.
- EE 267--Report Lab 12, April 1, 1994:
- Experiment #12 was a learning lab--boring.... My own personal note: this
lab was pretty darn boring, but it was nice to not have a difficult write-up
to do. Thank you!! Have a good Easter weekend.
- Note: I wrote Lab 11 and told my students that. (See if you can tell
that it is the end of the semester and I am about to assign grades.)
- EE 267--Report Lab 11, April 22, 1994:
- ...However, using the immense problem solving skills known only to fellow
EE's, a circuit was designed that flashed "hi Eli" instead (of course there
was also a little luck, or a TA's grand insight, that the roommate's father's
name was Eli).
- EE 267--Report Lab 11, April 22, 1994:
- Finally I am starting to learn something useful. Too bad it is the end
of the semester. Anyhow, this particular lab was probably the most
intelligently designed lab that I have had throughout this whole semester.
I am really impressed by the person who designed it (I wonder who it was :-) )
He should be given a raise and a medal.
- EE 267--Report Lab 11, April 22, 1994:
- Well there's not much else to say except that this was the most interesting
lab of them all (I'm really not trying to brown nose).
- EE 267--Report Lab 11, April 22, 1994:
- Truthfully, I liked this experiment. It was my favorite one because
it seemed more practical than the others. (Way to go, Chris!)
More Instructor Quotes.