[351] in Professors_Quote_Board
arthur mattuck, courtesy of a recent student of his (not me)
debbo@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (debbo@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Wed Jan 2 23:04:25 1991
Friday, Oct. 5
"Get happy with complex numbers!"
"It's not possible to erase water." -- as he erases the blackboard he just
washed, to make it dry faster.
Wednesday, Oct. 10
"That's sort of a subliminal topic."
Friday, Oct. 12
"In other words, I sort of go around Robin Hood's barn." -- to use Laplace
transforms to solve an ODE.
"The mountain is going to labor and bring forth a mouse." -- as he thinks up a
simple equation.
"This won't help you with the problem set, but it will help you with real
life."
Monday, Oct. 15
"I could wax lyrical over this formula, believe me."
Why do all of these [erasers] have a piece of chalk embedded in them?"
Monday, Oct. 22
"For an infinitesimal amount of time, I apply an infinite force. That's a
kind of an approximation."
"A moratorium is declared on you-know-what." -- about the rate of VD dying
out.
"This system is exactly as hard to solve as the original problem was."
Wednesday, Oct. 24
"No, this is an abstract course, so let's do it in general."
"There's a whole yoga for looking at autonomous systems."
"I mean in real life, not in 18.03."
"I'm just making marks on the board, but I believe you know what they
mean....You choose signs somehow or other." -- as he draws an RC circuit.
Monday, Oct. 29
"Because they're secretly both the same, but I wouldn't know that." -- about
choosing lambda.
"It's always safe to put an extra minus sign to make it work out."
"Of course, that's the solution to the system, except when it isn't."
Wednesday, Oct. 31
"The mathematics are in your book; it's just the words that aren't."
"I can't think of another letter."
Friday, Nov. 2
"I think I'm just going to appeal to a higher authority, namely my own."
Wednesday, Nov. 7
"During World War One - that was before your time...."
Friday, Nov. 9
"I assume you're all breathing....forget that you're aware of it."
"In the days before computers - that's before you were born...."
Wednesday, Nov. 14
"Before I torture you, I have to explain why I'm going to do it....First of
all, a streak of sadism...."
"A time out while I consider my next move."
Friday, Nov. 16
"It's a sunny day outside, so I don't think I'm going to work any
problem in undetermined coefficients."
Wednesday, Nov. 28
"We're morally obliged to combine the n's here, because you went through high
school algebra."
"Don't forget the powers of X." Mattuck leaves one out. A student calls out,
"Don't forget the powers of X."
Wednesday, Dec. 5
"No free radicals on this board!" -- as he erases 5.11 leftovers.
Friday, Dec. 7
"And you will tell your children unto the twentieth generation."
Wednesday, Dec. 12
"Let's have a responsive reading or something like that."
"This course comes around and bites its tail."
Non-linear ODEs have "private bad places."
"For many of you this is terminal mathematics."
