Quotes from the First Day...

"There is no Mathematics in the so-called Real World."- Real Analysis professor

He also passed out a list of "rules" for the class which included "do not divide by zero" and "do not speak or write the nonexistent word 'math.'" As a Perfect Southern Gentleman, he doesn't seem to be a big fan of abbreviations- the syllabus notes that we will have Examinations, not exams, etc. On day 1 we learned about The Calculus Arch, consisting of Riemann integrals (to find area) on one side and the Tangent Line problem on the other, connected by the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. All of Mathematical Analysis rests on the arch. When it comes to RA, everyone has a paradigm...

"You won't have any problems... if you know the entire Universe."- Probability professor

This esteemed young gentleman is on loan from Yale and originally hails from St. Petersburg, Russia. The accent I was worried about? No problem- his English his very good. There's even a [cute] hint of Brittish in it. His lecture style was clear and the only impediment to following it was the fact that the room was unbearably warm (most of the Math building is unairconditioned, and our bright young professor decided to close all the windows so we could hear him better. Apparently years of severe hardship make things like livable temperatures seem unimportant in the Russian academic mindset.) He seemed just very slightly nervous and got the distributive laws of set theory a bit wrong, but I helped him out. ;-) I'm very excited about this class...

"Er, hum, um, algebra. Hrhmmph. Roots. Polynomials- um, transcendental, algebraic. Hummph." - Algebra Professor

I was warned about this guy by the other grad students. He is disorganized- evidenced by the fact that he showed up for the class at the last minute, with nothing but the textbook. (I got the distinct impression that he wouldn't have shown up at all if it hadn't been for a crumpled sticky note that he found in his pants pocket from his wife: "Monday morning, 9:10, graduate algebra!! You're teaching!!") No lecture notes, no syllabus. He sort of made up a lecture as he went along, I think. Strong tendency to avoid complete sentences and definitive statements about anything. He is the happy, rumpled Computer Programmer type- his field is prime factorization and finding large primes, which he happily babbled about for the last 5 minutes of the class. I took notes, but rereading them doesn't seem to be getting me far, as they are mostly just lists of phrases like "algebraic integers" without much content. (That's what he put on the board, and that's what he said.) He said he was covering the Prerequisites chapter in the book, but there doesn't seem to be much overlap between what he babbled about and what's in the book. (Did he read the prerequisites chapter? I doubt it.)

It's a very tough book- so it should be an interesting class.

And so- We Begin! :-)