new knowledge

So now that the madness of a house-hunt, move, guests, starting grad school in math and surviving midterms is mostly over, I will hopefully be carving out a wee bit more time to update this thing. But until then, have some quotes from the first half of this first term of big kid grad school.

Wisdom from discrete math...
- On solutions: "After finding it, it is trivial."
- Also on solutions: "It might not be extremely difficult, but it's rare that it's extremely easy."
- On questions: "It's a nice--well, it's a question of taste--question in combinatorics."
- On trial and error: "There is a positive chance I will fail badly. Doesn't matter."

Funny words in algebra...
- While describing large simple groups: "The largest is called...the monster. Denoted capital M."
- On the Sylow (pronounced variously) theorems, of which there are three: "See-low, sigh-low, see-lov, sigh-lov, pee-laf, pi-laf. First theorem, second theorem, red theorem, blue theorem."
- "This strange embedding is going to come from something called mystical pentagrams."

And good times in math 599, the teaching of university math classes...
- On first year students' perception of 'if and only if': "if this, then definitely, definitely!"
- "Seven is a ridiculous number. So is thirteen."
- We've had several guests, who have all been subjected to a quiz including the following question: "To what foodstuff would you compare the teaching of mathematics?" Their answers:
G: "I'll say pufferfish. Because if you prepare incorrectly, it's poisonous."
J: "sugar [...] if you have too much of it, you fall into a coma."
S: "Curry...spicy, yet sustaining at the same time."

But my personal favorite (overheard from my office), has to be:
"It turns out math is hard."