 |
Murphy's Laws and Mathematics
Murphy's law and its corollaries are familiar to everyone who studies mathematics.
- Murphy's Law: If anything can go wrong, it will.
- Corollary 1: At the worst possible time
- Corollary 2: Causing the most damage
Here are some ways in which Murphy's law applies to mathematics:
- The harder you study, the farther behind you get.
- Every problem is harder than it looks and takes longer than you expected.
- When you solve a problem, it always helps to know the answer.
- Any expression can be made equal to any other expression if you juggle it enough.
- Knowing mathematics and teaching mathematics are not equivalent.
- Teaching ability is inversely proportional to the number of papers published.
- Proofs don't convince anybody of anything.
- An ounce of example is worth a pound of theory.
- What is "obvious" to everyone else won't be "obvious" to you.
- Notes you understood perfectly in class transform themselves into hieroglyphics at home.
- Textbooks are written for those who already know the subject.
- Any simple idea will be expressed in incomprehensible terms.
- The answers you need aren't in the back of the book.
- No matter how much you study for exams, it will never be enough.
- The problems you can work are never put on the exam.
- The problems you are certain won't be on the test will be.
- The answer to the problem you couldn't work on the exam will become obvious after you hand in your paper.
| |