5 ms·
I had a fantastic math professor in my bachelor of engineering program. Besides promising to do handstand in the last lecture if everybody submitted the teacher
by jbj 5y ago
I had a fantastic math professor in my bachelor of engineering program. Besides promising to do handstand in the last lecture if everybody submitted the teacher evaluation, he would tell math related anecdotes. One about a high school friend, whom just loved the concept of greek letters so much that he invented his own greek letters, upper and lower case. During his hand ins he would regularly define variables as his own invented letters, paw, py or ypricon, and alledgedly did so at his oral exam, causing the censor to be highly confused and embarrased to not be familiar with those characters.
For sure a think-out-of-the-box move, and a good prank for a math teacher
- mbg721 5y agoI had to re-read that to see that the objection was at an oral exam. I would think most math profs wouldn't even blink at a squiggle as long as it was used consistently.
- layer8 5y agoThat reminds me that I used xmas trees and reindeers as index marks (i.e. instead of prime and double prime) in a hand-in once, obviously around xmas time.
- OJFord 5y agoFor some reason I could just never get zeta right, especially not quickly; so in relevant exams (EE) I wrote 'By <whatever-squiggle>, I mean zeta throughout'. I suppose I don't know for sure that that worked, (spoiler alert: didn't ace them!) but I assume it was ok.
- rrobukef 5y agoOne of my math teachers regularly abstracted formulas as houses and cigars. You know, 'cause (3x+5)² kind of looks like a house with an x as front door and a ² as a chimney. Cigars were used instead of ellipsoids. When translated they flew through space.
- bee_rider 5y agoExtremely tangential, but when I was learning algebra I for some reason always envisioned it as a great battle between the forces on either side of the equals sign. Terms being added and subtracted were normal troops. Multiplication -- great leaders and generals. Division -- special forces who could lay waste to the other side. The analogy is really not illuminating in any way whatsoever, but it did add a fun narrative to my problem sets.