Path: news.mathworks.com!newsfeed-00.mathworks.com!newscon02.news.prodigy.net!prodigy.net!news.glorb.com!postnews.google.com!i29g2000prf.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail
From: Jack <Jack.Walker951@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.soft-sys.matlab
Subject: Re: Find Minimum
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:44:28 -0800 (PST)
Organization: http://groups.google.com
Lines: 50
Message-ID: <560bda8c-b71b-4237-be76-6bb4c65c1513@i29g2000prf.googlegroups.com>
References: <ac460e51-a1a5-4e93-9031-220be5a23e5a@f10g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> 
NNTP-Posting-Host: 199.46.200.231
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Trace: posting.google.com 1202777069 15920 127.0.0.1 (12 Feb 2008 00:44:29 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com
NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:44:29 +0000 (UTC)
Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com
Injection-Info: i29g2000prf.googlegroups.com; posting-host=199.46.200.231; 
User-Agent: G2/1.0
X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.12) 
X-HTTP-Via: 1.1 lax-gate2.raytheon.com:8080 (Squid/2.4.STABLE7)
Xref: news.mathworks.com comp.soft-sys.matlab:450698


On Feb 11, 3:28 pm, "Roger Stafford"
<ellieandrogerxy...@mindspring.com.invalid> wrote:
> Doug Schwarz <s...@sig.for.address.edu> wrote in message <see-C4CECF.
>
> 17000611022...@71-129-133-66.dollamir.com>...> Roger,
>
> > I think your comments are spot on -- and made very politely.  Well done!
>
> > >   By the way, Scott.  Watch out with those anecdotes about
> mathematicians
> > > versus engineers!  Some of us mathematical types know of many
> delicious
> > > put-down tales in the reverse direction that we can retaliate with. :-)
>
> > So let's hear one!  I'm an engineer, but I always enjoy a laugh, even at
> > my own expense.
> > --
> > Doug Schwarz
>
> ---------
>   Okay, Doug, this may not be quite what you are expecting, but here's a story
> that actually happened at UC Berkeley.  I was a young, idealistic
> undergraduate math major seated, strangely enough, in an engineering class
> - I can't remember why.  The engineering professor, apparently wanting his
> students to get over their phobias in their current calculus courses,
> undertook to explain the concept of an integral.  He said with eye balls rolling
> appropriately, "Those guys over there in Wheeler Hall (the math department
> stronghold) will give you all this baloney about what an integral is, with all
> their fancy epsilons and deltas.  But you know all it is?"  At that point he
> whipped out a planimeter he had stashed away, swept its point around a
> great curve on his desk, and then proudly proclaimed, "You look at this little
> wheel here with the numbers on it, see?  That number next to the mark gives
> you the integral of the curve!  What could be simpler?"
>
>   In one fell swoop this fellow had managed to discredit centuries of careful
> and profound work by mathematicians in analysis.  It all boiled down to a
> number on a wheel!  As one might imagine I sat there seething with rage, but
> all my classmates looked very pleased to have had this "masquerade"
> exposed, and the professor looked disgustingly smug.  I had the feeling that
> in those few moments he had managed to permanently bias all those poor
> innocent young prospective engineers against all things mathematical.  It
> took a long while before I could see the humorous side of this absurd
> episode.
>
> Roger Stafford

Hopefully the quality of technical education at Berkeley has improved
since those backwater days. ;^)

Jack Walker