Quotes
"There is nothing more appealing than a hot woman with grey hair riding a bicycle. Hot needs no explanation, grey hair means she might be old enough for me to date, and if she cycles we have something in common already," Anonymous.
"No, no es una fresa, es un tomate," Spanish phrase from Duolingo, a language learning app on my phone. I wonder at someone that can't tell the difference between a strawberry and a tomato. Here's some other good ones: "Soy un caballo. Hablo ingles"; "No, no soy el capitan, soy el rey".
"Comics are a singularly effective medium for conveying cognitive dissonance," Jay Edidin, co-host of the podcast, Jay and Miles Xplain the Xmen.
"Brian, I know you only exercise to lose weight, but you should really do some free weight training as well. After all, men your age tend to lose muscle mass. Anyway, with all that extra weight you are carrying, you should be building up your strength," Clint Sello, my helpful friend.
"Brian, some of your pottery designs are not bad. Maybe you should get someone with talent to make them for you," Trent Doiron, another helpful friend.
"People who try opening their relationship because their current monogamous one is failing, are doing no one any favours. If your boat is leaking, that's a bad time to say, 'Hey, I've always wanted to try waterskiing,' " Travis Smith.
"So much of what is love, is fish love." - Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski. This seems like an odd comment, but it is part of a thoughtful discussion you can find a video of online (google "fish love").
"If you don't like the work you are doing, look for a new job," Dr. Deborah Mielewski, Senior Technical Leader on Materials Sustainability, Ford.
"You aren't having a mid-life crisis. It's a three-quarters-life crisis," 'Young Dave' Muraki.
"Asymptotics is the mathematics of wishful thinking," Lawrence Evens, Professor of Mathematics at UC Berkeley, while giving a lecture to the UBC Mathematics department.
"It's a one-dimensional problem, how hard can it be?," Huaxiong Huang, Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at York University, about a problem we are still working on ten years later (but we do understand some aspects of it now, mostly thanks to Lloyd Bridge who was a student and worked on the problem for his PhD thesis).
"Let's have a child to save our marriage," my parents. I was a failure from the very beginning.
"In case it wasn't perfectly clear, I actually expect you to do some work on this project," Rachel Kuske, Professor of Mathematics at UBC, then head of the department, directed towards me in regards to a Carl Weiman Science Education Initiative project I had a teaching release to do.
"It would have been nice to be asked instead of told, even though the question would clearly have had only one right answer," Carl Ollivier-Gooch, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UBC.
"My people have been lost. Scattered to the winds. But I will survive. As long as you buy something." Vidar the Collector, Vendor in Bastion's Keep.
"I would rather solve the real problem approximately than an approximate problem exactly," Roger Donaldson, CEO of Midvale Applied Mathematics, Inc.
"Mathematics and Marijuana don't mix," Anonymous. So true!
"Smoke a fatty for Rebagliati," Anonymous. Ross Rebagliati won a gold medal for snowboarding in the 1998 Olympics. He had the medal briefly taken from him when he tested positive for THC in a drug test after the event. The medal was later returned to him after officials realized that Marijuana could not be considered a performance enhancing drug (unless napping became an olympic sport).
taller.
a little
stands
on it
with a bike
A hill
Anonymous. Graffiti on the bike route on University Avenue coming into UBC.
"Unless you get over your depression I am going to leave you," Anonymous. I am sure this helped the spouse to put a smile on their face.
"I think this might be the best patch ever," Maggie the Jackcat, who published a fan site for the MMORPG, Asheron's Call.
"I floop the pig," Jake the Dog, a character of the cartoon, Adventure Time, in the Card Wars episode. You really have to watch that episode if you ever have played Magic the Gathering.
"The only top mathematicians we can hire in our department are assholes that nobody else wants," Anonymous.
"I'll never have a 50th wedding anniversary, but I have had two 25's," Dorothy Robinson, my stepmother.
Here are two quotes taken from Chemical Engineering articles from the 80s that sum up my research philosophy. Unfortunately, I lost track of the citation details.
"The scale up from the laboratory could proceed more efficiently if a predictive mathematical model was available to guide quantitatively the work and aid in the correlation and extrapolation of experimental data."
"The mathematical modelling of physical and chemical systems is used extensively throughout science, engineering, and applied mathematics. A wide spectrum of models is expressed as partial differential equations, one of the most widely used forms of mathematics in science and engineering."
Family Expressions with Explanations
Family Expressions with Explanations
"Don't get your shirt in a knot" (don't get needlessly upset).
"That's like kissing your sister" (not an encouragement to incest, rather a description of something that is just not as exciting as you expect it to be, like decaffeinated coffee).
"Do a dipsy-doodle" (an erratic trajectory, usually a circular motion in a motorized vehicle)
"Something to dip your spoon into," (a second dessert).
Epitaphs for Brian Wetton
"Brian Wetton was a pioneering leader in his field who shaped a generation of scientists around the world. He was loved by family and friends. He was also devilishly handsome." [this is how I'd like it to read].
"Brian Wetton really enjoyed his own humour and his fashion 'sense'. Tests were too hard." [more realistic].
Advice to Students
I have this on my professional web page:
- Remember to sleep
- Remember to eat (healthily)
- Try to exercise at least three times a week
- Make sure what you are studying is (mostly) interesting to you and has some challenge
I purposefully kept it a short list of what I thought were the key things to avoid diluting the message. There are other things I could have added:
- If you want to get the most out of your education, don't do recreational drugs or binge drink alcohol.
- You are successful if you are happy. Adjust your expectations and/or your work habits to make this happen.
- Balance working hard on the details and looking up at the big picture.
I also have some advice on etiquette for e-mailing your instructors:
- Don't address them by their first name unless they have invited you to [I do]. Don't title them "Mr/Ms" (never use "Miss/Mrs" I hope that is clear) if they have a PhD, because then it should be "Dr". If you are in doubt, "Professor" always works.
- Send the message from an e-mail address that is professional, not for example, "rudeboy69".
- Do not use texting abbreviations such as "r u happy?". Use full sentences with appropriate punctuation and capitalization.
- Include your student number.
Teaching Evaluation Comments
I get a spectrum of comments, represented below. I think the new realizations for me this year are that my language is too sophisticated for many students (many are ESL and association with my ex-wife really upped my vocabulary) and that many students have trouble reading my handwriting. I have learned just this year that script writing is not taught any more even in local BC schools. Anyway, those are the most obvious things to work on next year.
- Prof Wetton is a perfect professor, and I think there is nothing he can improve.
- Brian Wetton is a wonderful human being who made me love linear algebra.
- This man is one of the most passionate mathematicians ever and should be commended for it due to his constant use of humour. However, sometimes the humour did make certain parts more difficult to understand.
- OK. I can see that he is passionate about math, but that doesn't always translate to good teaching or inspiration.
- Dr. Wetton had a lot of wit in class, and overall was a fairly humorous man. Unfortunately he is not effective at communicating the course material in a way such that students can actually understand. His pedagogy is unique, but is likely more suitable for higher level students. First years need a lot of guidance when it comes to entering the academic world, guidance that Dr. Wetton was not entirely prepared to deliver. ["unique pedagogy"? Is that good? I don't think so...]
- I'm sorry. Wetton was monotone and while sometime made funny jokes, he was hard to follow. He moved to fast and did the examples for us. I think I learned this course quite a bit through YouTube. Many people skipped Wetton's course and went to see the other prof's lectures. [Hey, comparing me to that award-winning, teaching-focussed instructor is not fair: she is amazing].
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