Re: why does professor david c ullrich have to put people down to feel good about himself?

On Thu, 4 Dec 2008 09:38:17 -0800 (PST), lwalke3@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

On Dec 4, 5:22 am, David C. Ullrich <dullr...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:20:05 EST, amy666 <tommy1...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
you didnt say it was trivial ?
No I didn't. So?

I promised that I wouldn't call Ullrich an
incompetent teacher. However, I will still
say that I _disagree_ with his teaching
style, and this post shows exactly why.

Incredible. Exactly what leads you to think that
the contents of that post have anything to do with
my "teaching style"?

Given the way he reacts to corrections and the way he refuses
to answer requests for clarification I'd have to be an idiot
to try to "teach" Timmy anything.

And given the abusive way he's treated me I'd have to be
a saint to feel any obligation to try to teach him anything.

I didn't mention the converse until Robert did bccause it was
more fun to watch you guys go on and on in blithering ignorance.

Imagine a teacher saying, "It's more fun to
watch you students go on and on in
blithering ignorance than it is to actually
teach you anything."

Of course, there's nothing wrong with a
little entertainment. But if these posts are
representative of Ullrich's teaching style,
then I must disagree with it.

"Imagine"... "if"... it's fascinating that all
these hypotheticals are the reason you say
you _do_ think I _am_ a bad teacher.

Imagine a poster on usenet who can't tell
a non sequitur from a hole in the ground.

Imagine a student who acted in class the way
Timmy acts here. If Timmy's posts here are
representative of the way he acts in class
and he took a class from me he would not
be allowed in the classroom after the
first week or so.

Not because of his brave new ideas about mathematocs,
as you'd like to assume, but because he's so consistently
both rude and disruptive.

But the reason I didn't mention _this_ fact is that I (honestly)
assumed it was obvious to everyone.

Students enter class at differing levels
of ability. What may be obvious to the
teacher, or even some of the students,
may not necessarily be obvious to the
rest of the students.

Wow, I didn't realize that.

Choose one of the following:

1. I'm obliged for some reason to include a
statement of every true fact I know in every
post I make.

2. When I make a post here I'm being Bad _unless_
I somehow figure out exactly how much math
the person I'm speaking to already knows,
even though I know nothing about the person's
background.

Presumably you're not suggesting 1 or 2. But
other than those two possibilities I really
can't see what your point is here.

is it trivial ?
Of course it is. If C and D commute then C and CD commute,
and hence exp(C) exp(CD) = exp(C+CD)  = exp(CD+C)  =  exp(CD) exp(C).

Originally, tommy1729 posted a conjecture,
but Ullrich pointed out that some of the
terms (A^C) weren't defined. Once I rewrote
the conjecture, replacing all undefined
terms with defined terms, the conjecture
turned out to be trivially true.

Actually what's trivially true is _my_ rewriting
of your version: If A and B commute then
there exist C and D with CD = DC and
A = exp(C), B = exp(D).

Now you say that your version, with A = exp(C)
and B = exp(CD) (or maybe it was the other
way around) is trivially true. Why is that?

Since Israel posted why it was trivial, I
_learned_ a little as to why it was trivial,
and now I've _learned_ never to entertain a
similar conjecture again.

I've _learned_ something from Israel. I
didn't _learn_ anything from Ullrich. Thus,
in my opinion, Israel is actually more
effective as a teacher.

I'm not surprised. I suspect you'll find this
true in general: If you make a large number
of insulting comments about X in public
but have no history of insulting comments
about Y then surprise, you're going to
find Y a more effective teacher than X.

I wonder why that would be?


questions enough ?
to investigate ?
Giggle. Yeah, let's investigate this. Let's also investigate
whether the square root of 2 is irrational.

Depending on the ability level of the
students, many of them don't know that sqrt(2)
is not in Q, and many of those who do, don't
know why.

So? That has nothing to do with what I said - you're
taking the word "investigate" in a different sense.

At some point you may realize that mathematicians know more
math than you do

I _do_ realize that some people know more math
than I do.

How does that have any bearing on what I said?
I wasn't speaking to you.

That's why I post -- so that those
who know more math can teach me.

if that ever happens you'll stop making a
fool of yourself in public quite so often. Of course that will
be no fun.

To those with a higher math ability, those at a
lower math ability appear foolish,

This is insulting. It also indicates you're not aware
of the record. The record here on sci.math shows
I don't find comments from people who know
math foolish. What's foolish is a person who's
basically ignorant of the subject he's talking
about insisting that he understands it much
better than the experts. That's not quite the
same thing.

and to those
at a lower math ability, those with a higher
math ability appear confusing, and what they
say is too complicated to understand. I've been
on both ends of the spectrum

So have we all - most things that most mathematicians
say are things I don't understand. (If that sounds like
phony modesty it's not - the fact that I know a lot
more math than you do means I'm also aware of
a lot more math that I don't know.)

When that happens I don't insist that they're _wrong_.

You seem to miss these little points...

(though mostly the
lower level on sci.math, but even tommy1729
knows more math than the average person out
there on the street). That's what makes teaching
math so tough, I admit.

It's like I make a series of posts on sci.engineering insisting
that bridges should be made of cheese instead of steel because
cheese is more biodegradable.

Depending on the level of ability of the
students, some students may actually not know
why bridges aren't made of cheese!

Excellent point.

After a few weeks someone
finally takes pity on me and points out that cheese is not
strong enough to use for bridge construction.

It's not taking pity on a student to answer
their question -- it's called teaching!

What question are you talking about? In the
hypothetical case I mentioned the guy was
not asking any questions. Timmy has not asked
any questions about how to define A^C or
log(A).

At that point
I start complaining to other people that they didn't explain
that to me... they must have all been ignorant of the deep
secret fact that steel is stronger than cheese.

If a teacher doesn't teach a student, then the
student definitely has a right to complain!

If a teacher in an engineering course doesn't teach the
students that cheese is not acceptable as a material
for building bridges then the students have a right
to complain? Right.

Two comments:

First, as usual you haven't thought it through.
If what you say is so then the students also
have a right to complain if the teacher doesn't
explain why we can't make bridges out of paper
and why we can't make bridges out of pure
thought and... and that takes infinitely much
time.

Second, I'm curious how much experience as
a teacher you have. The last time I brought
that up you didn't say anything - let me phrase
it in the form of a question:

How much experience do you have doing
actual teaching in an actual classroom.

I'll give you a hint about the real world: if
I _did_ "teach" my students that you can't
use cheese to build bridges (not as a joke,
making it clear that this was an important
fact that I wanted to make sure they knew
lest their bridges fail) _then_ the students
_would_ complain! They'd complain
I was making fun of them, treating them
like idiots, etc. And they'd be right to
complain about that.

Now, I admit that Ullrich doesn't _have_ to
post anything at all, much less a complete
answer to my or tommy1729's questions. But
still, that won't stop tommy1729 or me from
forming opinions about Ullrich's teaching
style based on the little information we have,
namely what Ullrich posts.

Nobody's saying you shouldn't form whatever opinion
you want on whatever basis you want. Don't let
the fact that everyone but you thinks that your
opinion here is baseless stop you.

David C. Ullrich

"Understanding Godel isn't about following his formal proof.
That would make a mockery of everything Godel was up to."
(John Jones, "My talk about Godel to the post-grads."
in sci.logic.)
.

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