I had been telling my sister about my office’s holiday party, where one of the white elephant gifts had been a Sudoku game machine. I mentioned hearing about some sort of algorithm you could use to solve those puzzles. (I haven’t actually been able to find that algorithm online, though, so maybe I was misinformed.) Lindsay stops dead in her tracks and says, “did you just say algorithm? You’re such a nerd!”
I then mentioned that I had a degree in math, so I couldn’t really deny the “nerd” bit, and Lindsay made a comment about wishing she could do math.
As I was describing this, I paused and wondered if I should take in my most impressive-looking math text and leave it lying around my desk at work. After perusing my options, I figured that the most promising one was Multivariable Calculus.
(The joke in this is that multivariable calculus is the easiest math class in the world, assuming you can do basic calculus.)
My sister then comments: “She couldn’t do that even if it didn’t have multivariable in the title.”
She then thinks for a moment, and then continues: “She couldn’t do that even if it didn’t have calculus in the title.”
Ouch.
I so agree with you about multivariable calculus. Dispite my tendancy to skip the class, a lot, I still got an A… yeah… ;)
My multivariable calculus instructor was a graduate student named Anton. (Holy crap, I found him!) Ponytail, baseball cap on backwards, 32oz Togo’s drink perpetually glued to his left hand. The class covered all the material it needed to, and still managed to be an absolute blast. One of my fondest class memories, actually.
The only place you might argue we got “cheated” was in the final: we had gathered, and Anton walked in a minute or two before the official start time. As he passed out the exam, he informed us that this was the easiest test he had ever written. I double-checked all my answers, and was pretty much the last one out the door—fifteen minutes later.
Good times. Damn good times.