Re: Good lectures

["David T. Marx" <dtmarx@SIU.EDU>]

This reminds me of my university calculus professor back in the
early 1980s.  He was of the type that seemed to be muddling
through the lectures.  One day near the end of class, in perfroming
an integration example, he arrived at the amazing result that 0 = 1.
He scratched his head and the bell rang.  He declared to the class,
"If anyone can solve this, I'll pay $100 to the first student that has
the solution."

I went off to my next class.  An hour later, I sat down with some
lunch at looked at my calc notes.  Within a minute I saw the
answer... he was doing an indefinite integral and forgot the
constant.  I ran as fast as I could to find him.  He said, "If I had a
hundred dollars, I would pay you, but they do not pay me enough.
But you've proven to me that you're paying attention.  Good job!"

After that, I took as many classes as I could with him and learned
a lot.

David Marx
Southern Illinois University

On 3 May 2001, at 12:25, Harry Hightower wrote:

> I have used the technique that has been described and I now find myself defending my competency. My student(s) instead of trying to apply themselves, went and complained to the principal.
>
> > > > jcooper@BUCKNELL.EDU 05/02/01 04:09PM >>>
> On Wed, 2 May 2001, Laurent Hodges wrote:
>
> > George Carrier (head of the Challenger Explosion committee that
> > Feynman served on) at Harvard taught the applied math course for
> > graduate students for many years.  He tried giving beautiful, perfect,
> > unflawed lectures some years, and flawed lectures with mistakes ("Oh,
> > this isn't right, it should be xxx, but I don't know where I went
> > wrong.") other years.  He was convinced that students performed better
> > in the second type of lecture and attributed it to the fact that they
> > went home and straightened everything out after the flawed lecture,
> > and learned in the process.  Well, I know I did that!
>
>    I took graduate Quantum Chemistry from Bill Gwinn the last year he
> taught at Berkeley (early 60s).  Gwinn would come into class every day and
> within ten minutes, be completely lost.  He'd fuddle at the board to our
> most intense irritation, then grin sheepishly and say he'd work it out
> next period.  The next period he'd come in, outline the previous class
> flawlessly, commence the new material and promptly get lost.
>    A few of us figured out that we were supposed to go home each day and
> work out what he'd blown, then compare our solutions with his the first
> few minutes of the next day.  How many of today's students would be able
> to figure that out, or being willing to do the work on their own/together?
>    My guess is most would go straight to the dean.
>
>  John N. Cooper, Chemistry
>  Bucknell University
>  Lewisburg PA 17837-2005
>  jcooper@bucknell.edu
>  http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/jcooper
>  VOX 570-577-3673    FAX 570-577-1739