Friday, October 5, 2012

Calculus memories from Harvey Mudd College

I had a multivariable calculus professor in college who was first-generation Chinese. She's a world expert on differential geometry, and a bit quirky. How much of it is her being Chinese, and how much of it is her quirkiness, I don't know.

Evidently we weren't the brightest class in recent memory, because she decided to review some single-variable calc during a review session. Here's how she helped us remember the derivatives of the exponential and natural logarithmic functions.

"e^x is like a strong child. You hit it [with a derivative] and nothing happens."



"ln x is like a weak child. You hit it and it dies."



I think there was audible consternation. But we remembered.

2 comments:

D Gruver said...

From either that review session or another she also referred to ln(x) as a scared child that, when hit (with a differential operator), would go under the table.

She was all kinds of quirky, and al kinds of brilliant. I really enjoyed her lectures (and the way she said 'h').

Ryan Yamada said...

She would also say "dot" (for dot products) like she had just stepped on a rusty nail. It woke up anyone who happened to be nodding off in lecture.