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Fun Stuff

Lecturer Quotes

Over the years the lecturers here at Warwick have delivered one great lecture after another, sometimes they even find the time to say something funny. WMS presents to you some of the best quotes from our favourite lecturers.

At the bottom of the page you'll find more fun stuff!
Or view this page in alphabetical order.

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  • Miles Reid

    • "You can't use vectors when you are drawing diagrams on your oiled body after a bath" - 1995
    • "So I'm just going to say the same thing with my hands tied behind my back" - 1995
    • "The dog is going to start it's walk from that post" - 1995
    • "So that's a dog that's asleep; let sleeping dogs lie" - 1995
    • "Aslong as you stay close to your mother you know what left and right are" - 1995
    • "I have the moral duty to show you this is a topology" - 1995
    • "You might think the notation curly B is set up as to be balls" - 1995
    • "... to check whether n is prime, you only have to check whether it has a prime factor < = 121" - 1995
    • "The probability of this is very small, but it is virtually certain to happen" - 1995
    • "I'm philosophizing, not doing anything sensible" - 1995
    • "I'm crossing my legs when it comes to abstract algebra" - 1995
    • "One looks quite big and fat" - 1995
    • "What's in books is a list of what's not interesting" - 1995
    • "There are millions of proofs of Fermat's Last Theorem" - 1995
    • "12 = 28-14-4+ 1" - 1995
    • "I'll just leave the exercise as an exercise" - 1995
    • "This is real, not algebra" - 1995
    • "...a fun bit of combinatorics and number theory" - 1995
    • "All good things in life have an end, except a sausage which has two" - 1995
    • "A circle has no end. Therefore, it's not good." - 1995
    • "This will do you a lot of good in this life and the life to come" - 1995
    • "This is an elementary calculation,but I got in a muddle" - 1995
    • "Sometimes lectures go really, really badly" - 1995
    • "So f takes this point and spreads it out all over this line rather like al-Qaedas just hit it - and then the inverse function sort of sweeps the debris up and puts it back on the point. [Algebraic Geometry] " - 2003
    • "I have a beautiful proof of this, however I appear to have left the piece of paper on my desk." - 2004
    • "..pulling a rabbit out of a hat and examining it very carefully and saying, yes, it is a rabbit .." - 2003
    • "..keeps professors of algebra in employment but has no practical purpose .." - 2003
    • "..so insubstantial it may not be convincing, but it is rigorous .." - 2003
    • "..it's pure pedantry but I do it anyway .." - 2003
    • "..makes it trival to divide everything into half-sized mouthfuls.." - 2003
    • "..I think it's backslash hook leftarrow in TeX .. " - 2003
    • "When something in mathematics has three or four names, that means it's important." - 2006
    • "We're in this complicated abstract mess where we don't understand anything that's going on." - 2006
    • "If you don't understand what you are doing, sit down, have a cup of tea, and consider the case n=2." - 2006
    • "A line is not linear! [It's affine linear, obviously.]" - 2006
    • "My definition of affine space, it's confusing. I get confused by it sometimes." - 2006
    • "Saying it's obvious is an immensely powerful tool in mathematics." - 2006

  • Rudolf Romer

    • "I'm sorry, I'm waving a knife around because I don't have a pointing stick. Am I scaring you?" - 2005
    • "We are no longer in the business of pretending to be Moses" - 2007
    • "If nothing happens, then clearly nothing happens" - 2007

  • John Rawnsley

    • "d2 needs to be bigger than... one over... can anyone see which inequality I need to use?" - 2001
    • "This is just a notationally complicated way of saying f is a homomorphism." - 2007

  • Dmitriy Rumynin

    • "8 is very much like 6." - 2004
    • "If you showed me that definition in the middle of the night, I wouldn't know what it was. [Definition of Group Action] " - 2004
    • "[After completing a proof on change of bases] And there it is; that is black magic. Three hundred years ago you could be burnt for that." - 2004
    • "You can either follow the proof or wiggle your way around." - 2005

  • Lasse Rempe

    • "I suppose in this case I will give you a calculation which is correct." - 2005
    • "This is the last time we will see explicit anything." - 2005

Other Bits

A selection of links to other fun bits: