Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Update from Budapest...

Erdélyi-Szabó (Logic):
* "Now we are ready to define truth" writes Def. Truth on the board. Steps away from it, looks at the board, looks at the class for about 5 seconds, and continues the lecture.
* (On Tuesday) "If it is Thursday, I am an idiot. If it is Thursday, I am a f... genius."

Komjáth (Set Theory):
* "The whole word is a directed graph... sort of."
* (About once a week) "Set theory must eat up everything."
* "We have reduced the problem to a more complicated one."
* "You should not confuse infinitely many steps in a proof with infinitely many steps."
* "We already know from kindergarten that aleph_null plus aleph_null equals aleph_null."
* "If you need free will, you can't do it infinitely many times."

Hermann (Group Theory):
* "Look at 12. If I am not mistaken, it is (2^2)*3."
* "After you believe these things, it is easy to prove."
* "Notice that this h is different from the earlier one. That had a double index, this has a single index. Quite a difference."

Küronya (Topology)
*"Everything I wrote was correct. But it had nothing to do with the task at hand."
*"It often happens, I say one thing and write another. Typically one is correct."
*"All this fancy formalism tends to obscure things at first, but later on, that's all you'll have."

Stipsitz (Analysis)
* "These are the properties we will never question. Until we do... which I'll probably do in a week or two"