G_of Oxford And Cambridge

Oxford and Cambridge

Hi, This is a compilation of humorous quotes from people (mostly lecturers) at Oxford and Cambridge. I found them all on Web. Yours, Gautam.

OXFORD 1989 This lecturer seems to have a tautology problem: • "A mapping is 1-1 and onto if and only if it is 1-1 and onto." From a lecturer who knows exactly what he intends to do: • "....and now we need to increase n. The best way to increase n is to increase n." Obviously a student who didn't like his lecturer: • "Oh dear, where's my rifle...." In the middle of a difficult proof: • "This is the stage where I start to pray"... followed by... "Somebody up there is being kind to me, are they? No." followed by... "I've done something silly with a square root of 2." Some Integration quotes: • "You can sleep if you want." • "It's delicate to get your hands on it." • "Will we all agree to shut that one in a cupboard?" • "Well we can't quite stop yet - although I am tempted..." • "This is fun: lots of magical ways to solve differential equations!" A disillusioned lecturer: • "In the old days, the pure days..." Some quotes from a statistics lecturer: • "This is a stupid example - you can see why; it's an exam question." • "We observe approximate approximation to .... " Yet *more* integration quotes: • "Integration by parts is not economical on paper" • "It's all so simple it's hard to remember" • "I worked it out last night - let's see if it works in the daylight" This term's contradictions prize: • "I want to stop looking at inhomogeneous equations and start looking at inhomogeneous equations" Nope, this isn't 'Hurricane': • "Imagine me running towards you at root-three-over-two c"

You'll never guess what - we had an incredibly quotable integration lecturer: • "Has anyone got it out yet? (Pause) You're not doing it are you?" • "It looks an incredibly integrable function !!" • "Proof's easy, by the way, provided I keep my act together" • [to a moving blackboard] "SIT!!!" • "I'll just reassmble the duster" • "Take the computer and it will do lots of things while you're at the pub" Some quotes from a Rings and Groups lecturer: • "Examples come in two types: interesting ones and examination ones" • "Now I run down the r's and up the b's" A befuddled lecturer: • "Is this the right lecture theatre?" Even More Quotes: • "The proof is not required for finals, but I'm going to give you it anyway because it's nice." • "multiplied by the stupid derivative dFx" • "I'd thought we'd spend the rest of the day in light entertainment: Let's do some schools questions!" • "Questions are easy, with a bit of luck" • "If you want to cut corners, an intelligent corner to cut is not to learn the proofs of any of these theorems" • "I'll take a special delta when I see what I need" • "If x were negative this would go sky-high - it would blast off the map" • "Can I bring along an elephant and some trumpets to draw your attention..." • "Pinch yourself, kiss your neighbour, anything to draw attantion to this" (loud kissing sound of student kissing neighbour) • "Let me make a mistake now" • "That woman can't clean the board. I pay someone to clean the floor at home and then I come here and spend 15 minutes mucking around" • "We could do it if we could pull the sum sign through and that's what God gave us the monotone convergence theorem for" • "...and at this stage your heart should have a slight hiccup" • "...and at this stage you should go and have a beer" • "Now we go into automatic drive and finish this off" • "I'm going to use this diagram. It's not completely silly" After turning out all the lights: • "So that's what these switches do!"

A different quotable lecturer: • "Are you bored?" [Students shout Yes] • "Are you mega-bored?" [Students shout YES] • "What a waste of time coming to Oxford to get bored in lectures." A talkative lecturer: • "No, let me stop gibbering my mouth off without thinking about it beforehand... and I've just shot myself in the foot" More of the prolific lecturer: • "You keep thinking you've got over the hiccups ….. and then…. they come back again" • "I like it. (referring to a theorem) It looks upside down to me." • "...there's the following delicious little proof" • "I've got two 2's, the third should be a 3" • "Let's fall into the trap - let's do the obvious thing" • "The trick is not to write anything" • "It will enable you to pull derivavtives through integrals, which you have wanted to do all your life - and some of you have been. This tells you when you can legally do it." In a differential equations lecture: • "As you can see, these equations are very easy to remember - hold on, I've missed out a term..." 1990 Starting off a course early in the year: • "The important thing to remember about this course is that it doesn't actually mean anything." An energetic lecturer: • "Note that one must always have his sleeves rolled up for discussing this kind of thing." Tautology-of-the-term prize: • "If you start off with a 72 elements and take away half, you're left with the other half"

CAMBRIDGE 1985 The Tautology prize goes to the lecturer who uttered the gem: • "If we complicate things they get less simple." This year's modesty award is given for a phrase spoken by a lecturer after a rather difficult concept had just been introduced. • "You may feel that this is a little unclear but in fact I am lecturing it extremely well." 1986 From an algebra lecture: • "This book fills a well needed gap in the literature." And another encouraging book review: • "This book is only for the serious enthusiast ; I haven't read it myself." A perplexing quote from a theoretical chemist: • "...but it might be a quasi-infinite set." Now…What is a "quasi-infinite set? An engineer actually gave an answer to the question of "quasi-infinite" sets: • "It's one with more than ten elements." And they wonder why buildings fall over... ?? This year's Modesty Prize is awarded to the lecturer who said : • "Of course,this isn't really the best way to do it.But seeing as you're not quite as clever as I am - in fact none of you are anywhere near as clever as I am - we'll do it this way." From the same lecturer : • "Now we'll prove the theorem. In fact I'll prove it all by myself." In the middle of the course the lecturer offered this piece of careers advice: • "If you haven't enjoyed the material in the last few lectures then a career in chartered accountancy beckons." A lecturer of Linear Systems found the following on his board when he arrived one morning: • "Roses are red, Violets are blue, Greens' functions are boring And so are Fourier transforms. "

1987 From a supervisor : • "Any theorem in Analysis can be fitted onto an arbitrarily small piece of paper if you are sufficiently obscure." No matter how simple a course is there will always be occasions when a certain amount of arithmetic is called for: • "I just want you to have a brief boggle at the belly-busting complexity of evaluating this." From a Special Relativity lecture: • "...and you find you get great masses of energy." • "This must be wrong by a factor that oughtn't to be too different from unity." A flattering comment for a student by his GR supervisor: • "She's the only person in DAMTP who's a real person rather than an abstract machine for doing tripos questions." A thought from the same student: • "Sex and drugs? They're nothing compared with a good proof!" In the true style of Cambridge Maths Tripos we have the following: • "Proof of Theorem. 6.2 is trivial from Theorem. 6.9" Can anybody guess the context in which the following is correct ? • "This theorem is obviously proved as 13 equals 15."

Why do mathematicians insist on using words that already have another meaning? • "It is the complex case that is easier to deal with." From an Algebra III lecturer : • "If you want to prove it the simplest thing is to prove it."

1988 From statistics: • "I too would like to know what a statistician actually does." • "We're not doing mathematics; this is statistics." • "You could define the subspace topology this way, if you were sufficiently malicious." • "You mustn't be too rigid when doing Fluid mechanics." Talk about ulterior motives... • "This handout is not produced for your erudition but merely so I can practice the TeX word-processor."

From 1A NaturalScience "Cells" course: • "There are two proteins involved in DNA synthasis, they are called DNAsynthase 1 and DNAsynthase 3" From a Part 2 Quantum Mechanics lecture: • "Just because they are called 'forbidden' transitions does not mean that they are forbidden. They are less allowed than allowed transitions, if you see what I mean." One from a 1A Engineering maths lecture : • "Graphs of higher degree polynomials have this habit of doing unwanted wiggly things." • "Apart from the extra line that's a one line proof." • "This is a one line proof...if we start sufficiently far to the left."

A slight difficulty occured with geometry in an Engineering lecture one day: • "This is the maximum power triangle." said a lecturer, pointing to a rectangle. This year the Computer Scientists seem to be in the running for the Honesty Award: • "I'm not going to get anything more useful done in this lecture, so I might as well talk." later followed by ... "Well there you are, one more lecture with no useful content."

And from various research seminars in the King's College Research Centre: • "I'm sure it's right whether it's valid or not." • "...the non-uniqueness is exponentially small." • "I'm not going to say exactly what I mean because I'm not absolutely certain myself." • "It's dangerous to name your children until you know how many you are going to have." • "You don't want to prove theorems that are false." • "If you play around with your fingers for a while, you'll see that's true." And One that tops it all … From a first year chemistry lecture… some personal problems of the lecturer: •

"Before I started this morning's lecture I was going to tell you about my divorce… but on reflection I thought I'd better tell it to my wife first." ******************