Ed Moskal, Math 114

"So Somebody said: Let's create new math... we're going to talk about sex. Uh.. sets."

"If that computer had used Cramer's rule instead of Gauss-Jordan, we wouldn't HAVE the 747 yet... because it would still be working on it."

"Gauss-Jordan is the best method known to man, woman, elephant, and Martian-kind"

"16 / 16 is 1, and 18 / 16 is 2. Whoa ! How did I do that ?"

"So as you can see, Calculus is a mere subset of Algebra"

"Guesswork is your best method for solving linear equations"

Barry Ferguson, Math 117

(The solutions to the midterm had been released the morning of the exam, and a few students had seen them)
"In order to resolve this situation, we've decided to pick 45 people at random and shoot them."

"An environmentalist friend of mine used a similar analogy using roadkill..."

"One of my colleagues defines an indeterminate form as his spouse in the morning"

"So now you can pick any number from minus infinity to infinity... You've got lots of choices"

"The inverse is undoing what you have done. If you put on your socks and then your shoes, you usually take off your shoes before you take off your socks. If, however, you put on your shoes, and then your socks, then you would in fact take off your socks before your shoes."

Ray Legge, Chem 102

"If you were all molecules bouncing around this room, the slower ones of you were the ones who were at POETS last night."

Savvas Damaskinos, Phys 115

"The dog has constant velocity. The groundhog starts at rest and has constant acceleration. So when the dog catches the groundhog, the final velocity of the groundhog is zero, because the dog grabbed him, and he stopped."

Don Frazer, GenE 170

"This is a rigid body. We all like rigid bodies. The main things you do with rigid bodies are: you translate them and you rotate them."

Lipshitz, Math 118

"You people don't know anything. Even the ancients knew more than you people."

"No, MAN, you're getting caught in the same trap the Greeks did thousands of years ago !"

(student) "Can you re-write that ? I can't see it."
(Lipshitz) "You can't see it ? Well then stand up !"

"Of course, this model is fine for bacteria, because you can fit a hell of a lot of bacteria in one petri dish."

Beth Jewkes, Msci 261

"Now I don't know if you've done a lot of work with polynomials before..."

George H Freeman, ECE 150

"Do you know anything about limits ?"

Wing-ki Liu, Phys 125

"Have you seen complex numbers before ?"

JD Cross, ECE 209

(said to the offstream 2A elecs, during their first lecture) "In my 26 years of teaching, I have never come across a bunch of students as infantile or disinterested as [the Elecom99 class]"

Hasan, ECE 222

"If I don't want to listen to your interrupts, I can do two things. I can either put cotton in my ears or put duct tape over your mouth."

Hornsey, ECE 231

"I don't want to talk about reality. That would cause confusion."

Opal, ECE 241

(paraphrased) "As you all know from your labs, this is the Bode plot. Don't worry, the next time you do this course we will make sure you cover this in class first."

Bruno Preiss, ECE 250

"Copyright © 1997 by Bruno R. Preiss, P.Eng. All rights reserved."

Hornsey, ECE 332

"Well, HAL's birthdate is in 2 days. I suppose AI people have a lot of research to do over the weekend."

Quintana, ECE 342

(Michelle Abad who was visiting us that day giggles...)
"What, you don't like to normalize ? Are you from Arts ?"

3rd year T.A.

A.J.: Can you make these overheads available in the library, or the Web ?
T.A: (thinks...) No.
A.J.: (extremely Annoyed with the useless T.A.) Thank you.

Zhuang, ECE 316

"Two engineers are sitting around on a Saturday night. They decide to toss (toast) a coin. If they are lucky, they get head three times."

Singh, ECE 354

"Come on, You are mature Software Design students. It doesn't matter where you put it. The world is not going to fall over."

"It's easy to understand once you've understood it."

(paraphrased) "The parent then waits for the child to die."

"Don't make me write an operating system in assembly, that's torture !"

Wayne Loucks, ECE 324

"I don't bring my lecture notes to tutorial... because I don't want to give you a schizophrenic view of the material."

(paraphrased, regarding profs setting exams) "You all think we're the devil, out to get you ?"

In the questionnaire for the final exam :



Thanks to Hansol Lee for providing a copy of the exam for scanning !

Selvakumar, E&CE 231

(professor, in response to a question) "Yeah, those kind of thoughts always confuse us. [...]"

"Now, is it getting a little bit clearer, or is it still at the same level of confusion ?"

Vannelli, E&CE 304

"I'll have to use some of my Italian tallents on those people [at the copy center]."
(a tallent is an ancient coin)

"Make your donations to Father Tony."

(professor, just before the midterm) "You can use pencil, pen, crayon, ... whatever turns you on."

Wilson, E&CE 380

"This is really going to blow you."

Quintana, professor for E&CE 380 for electrical eng students

(during the final exam, after walking over to a student whose hand had been raised, and after answering the student's question) "Please don't ask stupid questions."

Khandani, E&CE 318

"After midterm we go to bombshelter."

"Before we continue ... I'd like to apologize for the course ... I know there are a lot of integrals and boring stuff, but I promise that after the midterm, it will get interesting ..."

(from the uw.ece.ece318 newsgroup)
"Dear Friends,
Please have a look at the following problems from the
text book for tomorrow's tutorial. [...]"

(professor, immediately after the midterm) "Was it hard ?"
[silence]
(professor)"I thought you wanted me to make it challenging !"
(students) "Boooooo."
(professor) "Does this change our relationship ?"

(professor, immediately after the midterm) "The marks will be fine, don't worry."

(professor, the day after the midterm) "You're so quite today."
(Michelle Ting) "We're still in shock, sir."

"I'm sorry, the more I try, the harder it seems. Let's just forget it."

(professor, immediately after the final) "Don't worry, the test was hard, but the marks will be cool !"

Nathan, E&CE 332

"When I explain to a tree how a transitor works I understand it better."

"What's that noise ... are they digging for oil ?"

(professor) "I hate questions like that ... from now on everything is on the final, even what's not in your notes !"
(student) "Then nothing has changed."

Anonymous student, during W98 workterm

"[...] Engineering and applied mathematics often bastardize math into some dead ugly tool, worthy of a glance only when it is absolutedly needed.

Dammit! Its secrets are not concocted by man -- they are discovered. Only those who treat it with reverence will be rewarded with insightful discoveries. One must approach mathematics as a child, readily admitting one's ignorance and be open to possibilities. Everyone else in Engineering (and probably elsewhere) seems to be interested in only the methods, the known, rather than the unknown."

Kostas, E&CE 454

"The first few days, you will see your profs freaking out."

"Does anyone carry explosives ?"

Field, E&CE 428

"May they burn in Hell!"

Dasiewicz, E&CE 457

"[...] Same thing with bagels etc."

Here's a poem, reproduced form Issue 4 of the University of Waterloo's "EnginewsLetter" (1997).

What if Dr. Seuss wrote technical manuals?

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report!

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
And the double-clicking icons put your window in the trash,
And your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash,
Then your situation's hopeless, and your system's gonna crash!

You can't say this?
What a shame sir!
We'll find you
Another game sir.

If the label on your cable on the table at your house,
Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
But your packets want to tunnel to another protocol,
That's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall.

And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
"Cause as sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk,
And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary RISC,
Then you have to flash your memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM,
Quickly turn off your computer and be sure to tell your mom!

Anonymous