A
finite
set
(with a small
cardinality)
of quotes from my math professors:
{
All quotes.
Quotes of Wilson.
Richard M. Wilson is a professor in the Department of Mathematics at Caltech.
He taught the first quarter of Combinatorial Analysis (Ma121a) in my sophomore year
- "When I ask you to recall something, [laughs] most of you will not have seen this before. Who was here in the nineteenth century?"
- - Wilson on the number of negative eigenvalues of a real symmetric matrix, 2005.11.01.
- "Given, well you're given or not given, suppose you are given."
- - Wilson on linear recurrences, 2005.11.14.
- This topic should remind everyone of linear differential equations... except me: as I have forgotten all about it, but someone told me it has similarities.
- - Wilson while writing the linear recurrences on the board, 2005.11.14.
- "Ya, [sadly] you are right. But can you find an independent sequence? I can."
- - Wilson responding to a challenge question, 2005.11.14.
- "I think it is 53, if it is not, change [the question] so [the answer] is right."
- - Wilson, 2005.11.14.
- "That's it, there's nothing more to say about linear recurrences. Except I made up a problem and you have to say something about it."
- - Wilson, 2005.11.14.
- "If I factor the denominator, it occurs to me that there is something called partial fractions, I heard it once, do you remember this?"
- - Wilson, 2005.11.14.
- "And it works out to oh I forget, well I don't forget, it is [writes the result on the board]."
- - Wilson, 2005.11.14.
- "There's a proof in algebra using algebraic closures. In this class, we prove existence by counting them. Oh! The number is greater than 0, they exist. They tried to fool me that I need algebraic closures so I need to know that stuff. You don't. All you need is to know about generating functions."
- - Wilson on irreducible polynomials over finite fields, 2005.11.15.
- "Compare coefficients of xn to find... I find something I don't know. Except I've seen it hundred of times, but you might have not known it. I am pretending I discovered this from that. Actually I discovered it by reading a book thirty years ago."
- - Wilson on the recurrence relation of derangements: dn=n dn-1 + (-1)n, 2005.11.21.
- "You remember Ryser? He was here at Caltech, retired in '85"
- - Wilson on Gale-Ryser Theorem, 2005.11.28.
}