math prof

@mathematicsprof71k followers

Ex math prof, ex Lt. Comdr PHS, ex ultra-marathon runner, ex servant to cats; present: keeping liver, kidneys, pancreas, heart, lungs in semi-workable form.

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Posts 92 posts

#	Date	Post	↓ Outlier	Views	Likes	Reposts	Bookmarks
1	Nov 14, '20	Quote by a forest ranger at Yosemite National Park on why it is hard to design the perfect garbage bin to keep bears from breaking into it: “There is considerable overlap between t	242×	0	71k	13k	1.3k
2	Apr 23, '24	I sat next to a guy on a plane once and after asking, I said I had a Ph.D in math. He said he only studied hs math and hated quadratic eq. He said I bet you have to solve a lot of	121×	1.2M	19k	258	613
3	Nov 23, '23	I had a dream last night that I solved the Goldgach Conjecture so I got up half asleep and jotted down a summary of the proof so I wouldn't forget it. I got up this morning eager t	40.2×	398k	3.8k	211	158
4	Nov 18, '23	If there was one thing that really 'blew me away' as an undergrad it was Cauchy's Residue Theorem. The idea that you could evaluate integrals by adding up some strange things calle	37.4×	371k	1.1k	72	334
5	Jun 9, '19	Sunday joke: Picked up a hitch-hiker. Seemed like a nice guy. After a few miles, he asked me if I wasn't afraid that he might be a serial killer. I told him the odds of two serial	21.6×	0	6.5k	1.1k	114
6	Apr 23, '24	@Musingsonmath Exactly! people ignorant of what mathematicians do	12.7×	125k	971	0	7
7	Mar 5, '20	In calc when teaching the 'min surface area of a can with given vol, of which soln is diameter = ht, I wrote a cat foot company telling them how much they'd save by making their ca	11.6×	0	3k	560	216
8	Dec 31, '10	2011 is also the sum of 11 CONSECUTIVE prime numbers: 2011=157+163+167+173+179+181+191+193+197+199+211	11×	0	287	2.2k	0
9	Apr 23, '24	@GregTrayling Yes, there are professions where outsiders have a reasonably accurate idea of what those in the profession do, but math is not one of them.	8.5×	84k	959	1	8
10	Dec 2, '24	I had a dream last night that I proved the Goldbach Conjecture. I didn't want to forget the proof so I momentarily got up and scribbled it on a sheet of paper. This morning it read	7.0×	69k	2.5k	142	136
11	Jun 8, '20	Quote of the day: “There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.” Yellowstone Park Ranger on why it is hard to design a bea	5.7×	0	1.4k	393	58
12	Aug 18, '24	@npparikh Send an email to the college where the teacher graduated asking them what kind of product they are turning out?	5.6×	56k	1.6k	3	9
13	Sep 18, '23	I'm writing a math book, but I'm going to make the title close to that of a famous novel so when people google the novel they'll find mine. I'm thinking about Wuthering Hyperbolas.	5.6×	55k	348	14	25
14	Jan 11, '24	@npparikh "You're lucky Mr. Smith, I put you right next to the door so you can make a quick exit."	5.1×	51k	883	0	1
15	Mar 14, '19	I recently got a phone call from someone who represented a security company who said I had a virus on my computer and offered to help. He said he only needed the password of my com	4.8×	0	1.2k	372	8
16	Apr 23, '24	@learnmegood Ha, you'd like that for about ... uh 2 days, then you'd go crazy.	4.8×	47k	549	0	0
17	Apr 20, '24	Before computers, I once found the inverse of a 50x50 matrix by hand! Fortunately, it was an orthogonal matrix.	4.4×	43k	540	37	36
18	Dec 4, '17	I just got a phony telephone call claiming to be my internet provider asking me for my password. I obliged, telling them it was the last 6 digits of pi.	4.3×	0	1.1k	323	0
19	Jun 17, '24	Today, my wife and I celebrated our 56th wedding anniversary. My wife admitted I wasn't the best 'kisser' before we were married, but I was the only one who ever explained to her t	4.0×	40k	568	20	57
20	Aug 29, '20	If there was one thing that really 'blew me away' as an undergrad it was Cauchy's Residue Theorem. The idea that you could evaluate integrals by adding up some strange things calle	4.0×	0	913	95	136
21	Mar 30, '24	I once walked into my PDE class on the first day of class and wrote some of the PDEs that we would solve during the term. Then a person came and said I was in the wrong room. I was	4.0×	40k	398	39	33
22	May 4, '18	Twenty equations that changed biology. What did I miss?	3.6×	0	704	330	28
23	Nov 26, '18	@DavidFeldman	3.5×	0	951	147	38
24	May 23, '22	As an undergraduate, I wasn't super excited about mathematics until I learned about Cauchy's Residue theorem and how to evaluate real and complex integrals using them. Was there an	3.3×	0	677	45	132
25	Feb 16, '19	World famous organizing and simplifying consultant Marie Kondo simplifies the equation y = x - x^2.	3.3×	0	713	281	24
26	Oct 29, '19	My advisor's advisor, advisor, advisor, advisor, advisor was Leonhard Euler. I tell my calculus students, this is a good example of a monotone decreasing sequence.	3.0×	0	965	133	15
27	Feb 22, '21	A nice little illustration of Bayes' Theorem.	2.8×	0	673	161	87
28	Feb 2, '18	I hope every math student knows about MIT's Mathlets that gives animations of many math concepts.	2.7×	0	601	250	6
29	Jul 20, '20	Math quote: With logic we prove, with intuition we create. Poincare.	2.7×	0	679	191	27
30	Sep 29, '23	What a Dream Team of mathematicians. In the 1800s Gottingen Univ had Gauss, Riemann, Dirichlet, Dedekind, Klein, Hilbert and others.	2.6×	26k	312	23	23
31	Aug 25, '19	A math teacher imparts final words of encouragement and hope to a graduating math student; 'may all your matrices be diagonalizable, your subgroups normal, and your poles in the le	2.5×	0	607	138	23
32	Nov 25, '18	In calc when teaching the 'min surface area of a can with given vol, of which soln is diameter = ht, I wrote a cat foot company telling them how much they'd save by making their ca	2.5×	0	629	144	20
33	Apr 17, '20	I’m writing a statistics book and can’t think of a title, so I’m thinking of tweaking the title of a famous novel so when people google it, they’ll find my book. So far I'm thinkin	2.4×	0	454	78	28
34	Sep 29, '20	Five ways to prove P=>Q 1. P => Q (direct proof) 2. -Q =>-P (proof by contrapositive) 3. (P ^ -Q) => Q (proof by contradicting the conclusion) 4. (P ^ -Q) => -P (pro	2.2×	0	541	128	62
35	Apr 18, '22	Famous one-line proof.	2.2×	0	571	101	65
36	Apr 27, '18	Twitter has so many smart people. Here are some relatively unknown math identities given to me by some of my great followers.	2.2×	0	398	187	7
37	Nov 28, '18	Mean professor problem: Prove log (1+2+3)=log (1)+log (2)+log (3). In case you don't get it, just remember log (1) = 0 and 1+2+3 =6. Once made all problems like this on an exam, lu	2.1×	0	567	114	17
38	Aug 24, '18	I'm not a Field’s Medal winner but I know some good mathematicians and often when they tell me about a deep idea they say, “the way to look at it is” which has always been a big he	2.1×	0	607	108	12
39	Nov 21, '21	Math quote: "The difference between a poet and a mathematician is that the poet tries to get his head into the heavens while the mathematician tries to get heaven into his head." G	2.1×	0	581	114	29
40	Feb 23, '19	Math quote: A rule of thumb for any good math talk is that it should have one proof and one joke and they should not be the same. Ron Graham	2.0×	0	523	144	8
41	Dec 19, '17	Ha, sorry bout that, my inner demons made to do it.	2.0×	0	484	144	0
42	Jul 6, '18	Over 2500 lectures on mathematics organized by subject matter and level of mathematics. #math #maths	1.9×	0	392	149	60
43	May 21, '19	Math quote: A large part of mathematics which becomes useful developed with absolutely no desire to be useful and in a situation where nobody could possibly know in what area it wo	1.9×	0	467	148	10
44	Sep 19, '20	Do you have a lot of time on your hands? Here are many unsolved problems and conjectures in mathematics.	1.9×	0	368	129	74
45	Sep 10, '21	If you are currently taking (ordinary) differential equations, you HAVE to check out @prof_g videos. They cover everything from visual solutions, bifurcations, strange attractors,	1.8×	0	334	75	149
46	Jun 17, '19	Nice	1.8×	0	448	112	36
47	Jul 22, '20	Before computers, I once computed by hand the inverse of a 40 x 40 matrix. Fortunately, the matrix was orthogonal.	1.8×	0	619	34	5
48	Sep 2, '20	I just got a scary phone call; my credit card company said someone had bought $$ items on it. I told them it wasn't me. They said they wouldn't bill me and would even fix it if the	1.8×	0	513	86	3
49	Jun 19, '20	Math quote: "Everyone knows what a curve is, until he has studied enough mathematics to become confused through the countless number of possible exceptions." Felix Klein	1.8×	0	500	101	15
50	Mar 12, '18	Mean professor problem: Prove log (1+2+3)=log (1)+log (2)+log (3). In case you don't get it, just remember log (1) = 0 and 1+2+3 =6. Once made all problems like this on an exam, lu	1.8×	0	421	134	2
51	Jan 5, '19	600 free online courses from 190 world-wide universities.	1.8×	0	318	147	54
52	Jan 7, '20	Here is a very readable book on functional analysis by a very lucid writer.	1.7×	0	371	76	103
53	Dec 28, '24	Math quote: The apex of mathematical achievement occurs when two or more fields that were thought to be entirely unrelated turn out to be closely intertwined. — Gian-Carlo Rota	1.7×	17k	338	29	43
54	Feb 9, '25	Damn, I wish I'd seen that pic in freshman calc class!	1.7×	17k	328	31	117
55	Nov 26, '18	@aeliasen	1.7×	0	433	92	19
56	Dec 24, '19	Fascinating.	1.7×	0	449	121	19
57	Nov 3, '18	Made this table for a class recently. Just thought I'd share.	1.6×	0	371	123	30
58	Feb 23, '19	Math students: Want to impress your teacher by giving the correct pronunciation of famous mathematician's names, like OY-ler, not YOU-ler? Here are the correct pronunciation of man	1.6×	0	309	129	36
59	Nov 24, '17	Math quote: There are two ways to do great mathematics. The first is to be smarter than everybody else. The second way is to be stupider than everybody else - but persistent. Raoul	1.6×	0	361	145	0
60	Dec 10, '18	View post on X	1.6×	0	408	109	7
61	Feb 22, '21	Shakespeare wrote King Lear during a plague, Giovanni Boccaccio wrote the Decameron during the Black Death, and Newton invented calculus and discovered the Law of Gravity during th	1.6×	0	415	72	12
62	Sep 10, '19	I thought this note in a recent textbook was nice.	1.5×	0	409	102	7
63	Sep 4, '21	Interesting.	1.5×	0	430	59	47
64	Jan 30, '21	If you are currently taking (ordinary) differential equations, you HAVE to check out @prof_g videos. They cover everything from visual solutions, bifurcations, strange attractors,	1.5×	0	297	70	107
65	Mar 11, '20	Interesting.	1.5×	0	393	104	20
66	Nov 13, '17	Math quote: The purpose of mathematical models is not to fit to data but to sharpen the questions. Samuel Karlin	1.5×	0	319	145	0
67	Aug 6, '19	Professor once proved 80% of what she said was the most beautiful theorem she'd ever seen, then assigned me to supply the last 20%. Next day I gave her my completed proof. Next day	1.5×	0	407	98	4
68	Jul 18, '20	Nice.	1.5×	0	403	86	20
69	Apr 2, '18	Looking for good math problems? The mathematics dept at Iowa State University has been asking its students weekly math problems for years. Here they are with solutions.	1.5×	0	312	118	34
70	Dec 20, '18	As an undergrad, I had a prof who laid everything out in perfect order. I also had a prof who rambled, introduced extraneous topics, etc, so I gave the first prof good ratings and	1.4×	0	314	71	10
71	Feb 11, '20	Before computers, I once inverted a 30 by 30 matrix by hand. I was fortunate though that the matrix was orthogonal.	1.4×	0	452	51	4
72	Mar 28, '20	Something well known to any student of calculus, but still nice to see.	1.4×	0	354	92	23
73	May 24, '19	In grad school, I was interested in statistics so I went to a talk by Laurent Schwartz called Distribution Theory. I thought it meant normal dist etc, but when he started off with	1.4×	0	418	52	9
74	Jul 27, '20	Math quote: The book of nature can be read only by those who know the language in which it is written, and that language is mathematics. Galileo 1623	1.4×	0	402	72	11
75	Aug 10, '19	Math quote: What I don't like about measure theory is that you have to say "almost everywhere" almost everywhere. Kurt Friedrichs (during an invited talk at the 2010 AMS meeting in	1.4×	0	364	91	4
76	May 1, '20	There are mathematical geniuses whose brains run like Ferraris while yours runs like a Model-T, but certain mathematicians, thinking Ramanujan, have a certain mystic about them. An	1.3×	0	307	78	52
77	Feb 22, '21	Famous equations from biology	1.3×	0	303	78	44
78	May 9, '18	I SOLVED THE RIEMANN!	1.3×	0	338	90	1
79	Nov 17, '20	My advisor's advisor, advisor, advisor, advisor, advisor was Leonhard Euler. I tell my analysis students, this is a good example of a monotone decreasing sequence. Do you have a fa	1.3×	0	414	19	9
80	Mar 8, '19	A student comes to my office and asks if I remembered a female student from 20 years earlier. I did remember her so I tell the student 'why yes I remember her,' whereupon the stude	1.3×	0	436	39	2
81	Oct 30, '20	Physics is the unfolding of the laws of the intelligible world, pure mathematics is the unfolding of the laws of human intelligence. J. Sylvester	1.3×	0	386	76	4
82	Aug 23, '19	Math quote: It is an error to believe rigor is the enemy of simplicity. Rigor forces us to find simpler methods of proof. ... David Hilbert	1.3×	0	316	100	5
83	Jun 21, '19	Walmart is using sensors to determine when shelves are empty, when floors are dirty, produce spoiled, etc. Walmart calls this its AI technology but seems more like simple feedback	1.2×	0	305	59	8
84	Aug 14, '19	Met my wife while writing my PhD thesis. I ask her if she ever met a real PhD mathematician. She said she once had a school classmate that was good in math. I laughed and asked her	1.2×	0	393	44	4
85	Jan 22, '19	Did you know that e^pi - pi is ALMOST an integer? It is 19.999099979... . For a fun diversion in 'almost integers' see	1.2×	0	294	84	12
86	Nov 14, '17	Math quote: A rule of thumb for any good math talk is that it should have one proof and one joke and they should not be the same. Ron Graham	1.2×	0	305	99	0
87	Jul 25, '18	Prof: How would you solve y” + y = x^2 Student: Method of Undetermined Coefficients Prof: How would you solve y” + y = sec x Student: Variation of Parameters Prof: How would you so	1.2×	0	298	84	4
88	Sep 6, '21	Damn, mathematicians never have fun experiments like physicists.	1.2×	0	340	53	14
89	Oct 2, '20	I went to the Univ fitness center today for the first time in six months and promptly forgot the combination to my locker so they called in a guy with a bolt cutter to open it. The	1.2×	0	402	23	2
90	Sep 19, '20	Spotted on a post in a Paris suburb.	1.1×	0	319	69	5
91	Feb 26, '21	@artcrimeprof Ouch! ... My high school principal told me I wasn't smart enough to go to a certain university, so I went to that university partly for that reason, eventually gettin	1.1×	0	425	9	5
92	Jan 30, '19	I wish someone would write a book giving illustrative toy examples of 100 famous (abstract) theorems.	1.1×	0	300	53	15
93	May 5, '19	I once knew a very, very good mathematician, maybe no 'Fields Medal Winner' good, but very good. He told me once that whenever he learned something new in math, but very hard, he'd	1.1×	0	303	51	18
94	May 24, '20	A good mathematical joke is better, and better mathematics, than a dozen mediocre papers. — J. E. Littlewood	1.1×	0	294	63	10
95	Jan 26, '21	One might say where mathematics and spirituality merge.	1.1×	0	310	54	8
96	Apr 29, '19	In grad school, I once made a boo-boo teaching freshman calculus. No serious prob, but now there are a number of middle-aged people unable to compute the rate of change of their sh	1.1×	0	324	48	3
97	Oct 26, '20	Old Sunday joke: Picked up a hitch-hiker. Seemed like a nice guy. After a few miles, he asked me if I wasn't afraid that he might be a serial killer. I told him the odds of two ser	1.0×	0	314	42	8
98	Jan 7, '19	After being married over 50 years, my wife asked me if I remember the time we went out on our first dance. I said no but I can still remember that 70 was the SOAP assembly language	1.0×	0	305	41	3
99	Jul 22, '20	In grad school, I once made a boo-boo teaching freshman calculus. No serious prob, but now there are a number of middle-aged people unable to compute the rate of change of their sh	1.0×	0	293	40	6
100	Jan 16, '21	Before computers, I once found the inverse of a 50 x 50 matrix by HAND! I was lucky though, the matrix was orthogonal.	0.9×	0	301	26	1

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