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From now on, I should be very careful about what I say to you.
- Ernest Zhu, after hearing my atrocious Tau Beta Pi initiation essay read aloud

Page last modified Monday, 31-Jan-2011 07:30:51 PST

person
quote context

aboudi, jay
"Three snaps in Z formation!" [snaps his fingers like a sassy black girl]Vallejo Junior High School (VJHS), 9th grade

agarwal, rajiv
"DELTA NAAAAAA!"Stanford PHD studies; passionately arguing with me about communications theory, in what, hindi? haha.

barkauskas, don
"Well, that was suboptimal." the understatement Don says whenever someone fails miserably

bly, elizabeth
"Yes, I am a girl."Vallejo Junior High School (VJHS) 8th grade honors algebra class; after calling out the name "elizabeth" during roll call, substitute teacher was puzzled because the person who said "here" looked like a boy. THAT'S RIGHT BLY I AM YOUR ARCH-NEMESIS! PH33R MY SUPERIOR INTELLIGENCE! =D

boyd, stephen, p.h.d.
(peppy matrix mathemagician)
my collection of boyd's lecture mantras:
  • We'll get into more details about this later.
  • In economics, they call this the [blah]. In MS&E, they call it the [blah]. And in statistics, they call this the [blah].
  • Every 10 years or so, someone in a different field rediscovers this and publishes a paper. But of course, Gauss already knew it.
  • This is extremely obvious.
  • This is a 300 level class, and there's required reading, so I feel free to gloss over this stuff.
  • I think it's time to move on.
  • It could be right. It could be wrong! You never know. I can say whatever I want.
  • By the way, how long do you think it would take to solve [blah]? Just guess.
  • You can solve a million variables! Not a problem.
  • I really shouldn't be making fun of people on TV. People will find out.
  • There's the 1-norm, sometimes called the taxicab norm. There's the L-infinity norm. And of course there's the L2 norm. Depending on the application, you may be interested in different norms. [etc etc ...]
  • Everyone following this?
  • I think that came out right.
  • It's bad that this is on TV. Because if it wasn't on TV, I could just deny that this ever happened. And no one would ever know!
  • Now we know how to do this. This is just 263.
  • I just realized that *no one* in this room knows what I'm talking about.
  • Total silence.
  • Now, you would NOT have been able to come up with this. But you could make up a story. Sure! Sure, I could make up a story for why this solution might make sense. [etc etc ...]
  • Now, this is like an exchange rate.
  • That's why I think everyone should take those classes. Just for self-defense. Because at any given moment, mathematicians could spring at you with some jargon and attack.
  • Now, the mathematics behind this are extremely sophisticated. OK. Are you ready?

bow, hansen
"If you're not the best at what you do, don't even bother trying."on what people should do with their lives

bucaojit, laura
"I'm glad you woke up this morning William!"Hogan High School (HHS), in some class

"William you are the most evil person I've ever met!"ibid.

"No, I'm not having William for breakfast!"HHS, AP Calculus in the back corner

"I'm afraid that one day you might beat your wife."HHS, while we were working on an ap english presentation

buckingham, trevor
"You didn't really think that you could beat The Law, did you?"victory e-mail sent to brian harvey, david culler, and the CSUA

chan, katherine
"taking ee121 is like going through a tunnel blindfolded, while fire is burning and chasing from behind. anytime, anywhere, i may be consumed; i have no talent, passion or energy to move forward. the scene from cs150 is very likely to happen again. bottomline: after tomorrow, NO MORE communication engineering." AIM profile, May 15 2003; hahaha, hilarious


katchan: you dont' go on aim anymore nowadays?
willywu: nah i decided SNR is too low in AIM
katchan: what is snr????
katchan: i forgot about it
willywu: ... surely you remember something from ee121
katchan: not much
katchan: :-)
willywu: well, you can look it up later
willywu: ask tse
katchan: he doens't know the stuff
willywu: lol
willywu: that's gold
over AIM, 8/10/2003

cover, thomas, p.h.d.
(information theoretician / stanford ee prof )
"I like the movie Terminator." in Cover's office, while visiting Stanford to discuss graduate studies in EE; we ended up talking about movies

" You know you wonder, when you come up with a new mathematical creation, a new theorem or something, what properties do you want it to have, to satisfy your ego? Well you want it to be dramatic, and you want it to be deep, you want it to be unexpected, you want it to have consequences, and ... you want it to be difficult to prove. Necessarily difficult to prove, and then that would satisfy your last ego need of demonstrating your gymnastic abilities in the sport of mathematics. "winter 2004 lecture; goes on to say that the proof channel capacity achievability satisfies all of those properties except maybe for the last

cummings, steve
"You have big tits Trina"VJHS 9th grade Honors Geometry class

davis, martin, p.h.d.
(ucb logician)
[U of Colorado philosopher Carol Cleland closes her talk, apparently having blasted away the Turing model of computability]

[a frustrated Martin Davis, sitting in a schooldesk chair, tips over and crashes to the floor; some laugh and others gasp]

Davis [getting up]: "I found this talk distressing, but I didn't realize I'd even fall out of my seat!"
at the May 2003 American Mathematical Society Meeting at SFSU, Beyond Classical Boundaries of Computability, IV; Daniel Ong and I would rave for hours afterwards about how Davis laid the smackdown

degroot, nick
"I am the big turkey. Rumble rumble rumble."9th grade Honors English, reciting "reflective journal" entries

del pilar, jolex
"Actually I find that quite offensive. I'm one-third Greek."on Hogan High School's Spartan mascot, after having discussed racial stereotypes implied by Vallejo High School's Native-American mascot; 4th period AP History, 11th grade, HHS

donahoe, brian
"I'll suck yours if you suck mine."to Geoffrey King (who was appalled); VJHS

dembo, amir, p.h.d.
(stanford mathematician)
[after Dembo uses a convexity to instantly solve a problem we spent hours on the night before, we ask how he was able to pull out such tricks]
Dembo:"How long did this problem take you? Half an hour? An hour?"
Song: "Half a day."
Dembo: "Okay. Half a day. The trick is now ingrained in your brain with pain."
during stat-310a office hours, attended by Song, Xiaowei, and myself

"This is my famous sandwich -- and you can eat it."stat-310a lecture, sandwiching a sequence between two convergent sequences

"I came here about half an hour ago, and spent that time moving random variables and sigma-fields around on the blackboard, and you were either dozing, or looking at some paper, or staring at me in amazement. But now I want to show you that this can actually be useful."stat-310b lecture on backwards martingales, 2/4/2006

ding, xiaowei
(stanford ee colleague)
Xiaowei:"Have you found your advisor?"
Paul: "Not yet, still looking around."
Xiaowei: "That's good. Still enjoy life!"
working on stat-310a homework in the psychology building, with Paul, Krishnan, Arian and me

"I don't just want A. I want A plus!"that's his thing.

doshi, siddhartha

sid > 		some things on your website are just utterly retarded
sid > 		like your google count
sid > 		there's no point for that kind of egoism	
wwu > 	hahaha
wwu > 	that's a great quote
sid >		yeah you better tattoo that one on your forehead or something


sid >   	just always remember wu that you cant rely on your looks the rest of your life
sid >		one day you will have to use that little brain of yours
wwu >   lol
sid >		crossing your legs in the front of class got you an A for ee120 
		but one day youre gonna have a straight professor and it wont work

fei, carrie
"Personally, I believe in Murphy's Laws and the Chaos Theory. Everything else is a bunch of BS that dead people made up to torture students."over ICQ

fulton, brian
click here for my transcription of the speech from my tape recorder hilarious graduation speech on 25 May 2003; B.Fulton was one of the Class of 2003 B.A. graduates in computer science at UC Berkeley

gill, john p.h.d.
(stanford ee prof, pretty funny guy)
[weissman and gill meet in the hallways of packard]
Weissman:"Oooh. What have you got there John?"
Gill:[tired and holding a box of junk]
"Oh, these are just some of my many permanent fans."
ISL, february 2006

"Haha. You'll never escape. It's never going to end."presenting new problems to me in his office

"Oooh. New problem. We can call it, "Another Thing You Don't Care About, Part II!"looking at problems with me in the office, summer 2004

"I had an idea. Consider this: Nano-barbers."more problems, summer 2005

graboyes, melissa
"Mario is coming out of the closet."via e-mail and phone, before I was to dorm with Mario at UC Berkeley (UCB); relayed information from very reliable sources, such as Ryan McKenney and Jay Aboudi

grillmeyer, oliver, p.h.d.
(ucb cs3 prof)
"My arms are parentheses, want to be a list?"a pick-up line used by dr. grillmeyer during Fall 1999 CS 3 lecture while discussing the many parentheses of Scheme; thanks to elaine for this one

hartman, max
"SOY EL DEMON DE FUEGO!!"spanish I "got milk" group skit starring Max Hartman, Matthew Norman, Kevin Cooper, and William Wu; Max has a gasoline freak accident and buys leche to quench his flaming body

heise, betty
"Matt ... Liz ... save it for after 7 pm."to Norm and Bly, who were making out in science lab; VJHS

heise, scott
"So many generic people."describing Berkeley students

hernan, gerrod
"Yea bitch! Whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do?"while throwing hardback books at the backside of Brian Bailey's head; Brian just stood still and said nothing, trying not to cry; VJHS

hilfinger, paul, p.h.d.
(ucb cs61b prof)
"Whenever possible, steal code."one of hilfinger's tenets

"'RTFM' by the way stands for 'Read The Fucking Manual'."during cs61b lecture

jahanbakht, mehdi
"Making money is all that matters."cromem 3rd floor lounge, thursday june 16th 2005 circa 9 pm

jhala, ranjit
"You can never have enough candy."demonstrating an application of the knapsack algorithm to a problem involving vitamins, cookies, and candy. ranjit has an amusing indian-british accent :)

"Oh! It's 5 PM! This is when I turn into a pumpkin."upon termination of cs172 office hours at 5:02 PM on April 2, 2003 in 511 Soda Hall

"I'm obsessed with cookies. What's that company that makes really nice cookies? Pepperidge Farms. In case you didn't know, Pepperidge Farms makes very nice cookies."cs172 discussion, 2:32 PM, April 9, 2003, 75 Evans

kahan, william, p.h.d.
(ucb math + cs prof /
mr. floating point)
"You must be from California."after hearing a student's incoherent oral solution to a putnam math problem at the blackboard

"It doesn't matter what you want to do. What matters is what you're good at."to dejected Ph.D. advisees

karp, richard, p.h.d.
(ucb cs prof)
"You guys are too foxy."when everyone in cs174 voted on switching doors after presented with the Monty Hall problem

karp, katznelson, yitzhak, p.h.d.
(stanford math prof)
"I'm a linear functional, and you are my client. I kill you. Then I'm zero."infamous katznelson lecture quote

keegan
"Calculate the velocity of the ball Microchip!"young african-american baseball pitcher taunting me at the plate, VJHS P.E.

"Yo man. When you become like hella rich one day and start your own computer chip company, can you gimme a job?"walking past me in the halls of VJHS, after school had ended one day

king, geoffrey
"I'm looking at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and maybe Berkeley."when Ms. Dunkin asked the class what universities students were considering; HHS 11th grade, AP History

"I got signed on with AstralWerks for 25,000 dollars!!!"HHS 11th grade, Earth Science

"One day Wu is going to self-contract ALS so he can be just like Hawking."HHS 11th grade, AP History; for the longest time I was so obsessed with Stephen Hawking

klinge, joe
"CRAPEZOID!"throughout VJHS

lai, kevin
(ucb ee122 prof)
"I'm here teaching because I couldn't find a real job."introducing himself to the class

latremoliere, frederic
(ucb math54 gsi)
"Your math is weak. Very, very weak."words of encouragement after returning a quiz to us during linear algebra discussion; average quiz score: 3/20, throughout the whole semester. latremoliere was trained abroad at the Ecole Polytechnique and is a merciless condescending french asshole who talks too fast.

"I would explain this to you, but I wouldn't want to change the American system of education."during discussion

ledbetter, demy
"Whole lotta buffin' goin on."9th grade Spanish 1, during an argument

li, song
"There are so many stupid people everywhere!"10/16/2005

Wu:"Do you ever get sleepy after you eat?"
Song: "Yes. Very dangerous."
10/26/2005, doing measure theory homework while eating at manzanita

[gives me a serious look]
"I think we should use some theorems. It may help us."
ibid.

"What is the definition of compact?"famous words, stanford fall 2005 :)

lin, kaisen
(yosen's brother)

kaisen the sifu > 	i just gotta go wuyo style, that's my new term willwuyosen hardcoreness

lin, yosen

willywu > 	here's a riddle for you
yosen >		ok
willywu > 	willywutang brings home three beautiful women and wants to have 
		sex with them all, but he only has two condoms. any one of the girls 
		may have an STD! how can he have sex with all three without transferring 
		any STDs between himself and the girls, or among the girls themselves?
yosen >		the answer is simple
yosen >		willywutang just needs to pinch himself and wake up

liu, alan

alan > 	what's wrong willy
alan > 	cat got your tongue?
over AIM group chat while our 162 group was coding in 2nd floor soda, and i was trying to figure out why my screen wasn't responding to my keyboard

" Dude, you misspelled 'misspelled.' "spring 2001 via e-mail. a rescomp network admin sent me an e-mail threatening to take legal action unless i stopped consuming roughly 2000% more bandwidth than the average berkeley student on the unit 3 shared ethernet; i countered this by pointing out that the admin "mispelled" a word in his e-mail, and proudly forwarded my correction to alan and the rest of my cs162 group :)

lo, elaine
"Let's perform DFS on each other!"brainstorming cs170 pick-up lines

lotz, bruce
(vjhs math teacher)
"Noah, why don't you close the door on your way out."slyly asking mischievous student to leave the classroom; VJHS, Honors Math I

"Noah, welcome to Noah's corner."asking that Noah sit in the corner, after i complained that he was disturbing my educational environment

machado, james
(hhs phys. teacher)
"This is hella funkdafied!"describing an elegant solution to an AP physics problem

"OK guys, so say you have a beam like this sticking out of a building wall. [chalks diagram] Now let's say at the end of the beam you've got one of those huge fat rappers like Big Pun, 500 pounds bouncin up and down. Now that's gonna generate a big ass moment!"AP physics lecture

messerschmitt, david
(ucb ee126 prof)
[messerschmitt's cell phone plays a cowboy song]
< coyly > "I know you guys want to see me dance."
[messerschmitt proceeds to do a half-hearted jiggle for two seconds]
ee126 lecture, ucb fall 2002

minahen ("popeye")
(vjhs p.e. teacher)
"Faggots! Around the world!"typical p.e. session, Vallejo Junior High

navarra, john
"Y'all be suckin some fat crack sacks."VJHS

newton, carol
(hhs eng. teacher)
"Wu-wu. I thought about it last night, and you're absolutely right. You're the only one in this class with a brain."to me (Wu-wu = pet name) after I adamantly refuted her the previous day in front of the class regarding her assertion that using shorter words make poems sound longer; HHS, 11th grade honors english

"So you got it down pat huh? Gonna set the world on fire?"during a typical class session

"Don't make mountains out of molehills."ibid.

"Alright guys, there's gonna be a quiz on Wednesday."ibid.; while folding her arms. there never was such a quiz

neureuther, andy, p.h.d.
(ucb ee105 prof)
"See, the fudge collects in the chocolate well ..."analyzing a common collector amplifier circuit using hopeless food analogies; i guess he likes eating

norman, matthew
"I have to have it."reluctantly reciting embarrassing lines during a mandatory sexual education skit, 7th grade science class

"NYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"just being annoying, on a typical day

oldham, william, p.h.d.
(ucb ee40 prof)
"When you're in lab, try blowing up a capacitor."during lecture, encouraging educational mischief

olson, suzanne
(hhs eng. teacher)
"William, why is your yearbook application so crumpled?"staring somberly at a wrinkled ball of paper on my desk which was once an application to sign up for the yearbook staff, personally given to me by ms. olson; 10th grade honors english

"Now simmer down children."typical class session

"A beige towel and clothespins? I mean come on. Couldn't you have put a little more effort into this?"critcizing my cheap-ass costume for the end-of-the-year in-class julius caesar play, which i didn't give a flying shit about

ong, daniel
(ucb colleague)

If thou be WU
I'll tell thee true,
We shall rue.
Our room was took
Without a look
By students of a different book.
message left to me on the whiteboards in 283F 2/13/2003; our regular cs172 study room was stolen by a bunch of girls studying biology or something


For THE WU
Be there chairs anew
Clean and blue.
message left to me on the whiteboards in 283G 2/13/2003; the wu only sits in clean chairs! damn you!


wwu: cs172 is getting really impractical
daniel: Better impractical than Soul tactical
wwu: i'll see you in the csua. you're going down
daniel: Lizardman is the plan
daniel: Maxi will need a taxi
wwu: lol
wwu: maxi is the king, he'll fling you outta the ring
daniel: logspace grooves, not special moves
wwu: if sinclair played soul calibur, i'd kick his ass too
daniel: Need to finish homework, not be a dreamcast dork
wwu: lol
over AIM 5/1/2003 12:19AM, pondering over whether to do cs172 homework or play soul calibur


Subject: CS 172 Motivation

My dear Mr. William Wu,
You'd better work hard on 172.
You get to drop a homework--this is true.
But come this May, you don't do two,
You'll come a' cryin', sad and blue.

But wait, what's this?
Drop two assignments, leaving eight.
Everybody's happy, who could be pissed?
But you better still do it, or learn too late.

Final's coming soon,
The end of our academics
Until next year, I'll cocoon.
But now, last chance for crazy antics.
via e-mail 5-2-2003, after i lost motivation to do the cs172 homework, since we could drop one anyways; "antics" is apparently a subtle reference to a prank i was planning to play that was never realized. basically the plan was that one day while he's giving lecture, the recording of a long, whiny fart would slowly squeal from the speakers.

osgood, brad, p.h.d.
(mathematician)
Gill: [points to hemp rope resting in a tupperware case]
"What's that rope for?"
Osgood: [pauses]
"Oh. Well ... you never know." [smiles]
while Gill and I were visiting Osgood's office

i do a lot of embarrassing things in public, but trig identities, that's where i draw the line. student quoting osgood on an exam

perl, martin, p.h.d.
(physics Nobel laureate)
Audience Member: "How do you determine what's worth working on?"
Perl: "You have to look at what other people are doing, and not do that."
during a Stanford talk about conducting effective research; see here for slides given during the talk that i wrote down

poonen, bjorn, p.h.d.
(ucb math prof /
putnam exam god)
"Here's a proposition (true or false): I can put my whole fist in my mouth.""This happened on the first day of [spring 2001 math 55] class. No one knew what to answer. Then on the last day of class, the same proposition was repeated ... and then the professor proceeded to put his whole fist in his mouth! The class exploded in applause. I was highly amused." - elaine lo

ramchandran, kannan, p.h.d.
(ucb ee123 prof)
"It's so trivial, it's almost embarrassing."on determining the pole-zero contributions of each signal in a linear combination of discrete-time signals after drawing an argand diagram of the combination's region of convergence

"We're engineers. It's OK to abuse things to make our lives easier. That kind of abuse is OK. You don't get arrested."on the abuse of integral notation used by electrical engineers when dealing with the dirac delta function

"This is the real definition of the delta function. If you heard other definitiions, they were fooling you. But they were fooling you with good cause! You needed to be fooled. Otherwise you wouldn't have gotten to the point where you could understand that you needed to be fooled."regarding how the delta function is not really a function but rather, a distribution

[in front of the class, arms crossed]
"Next week we start sampling. It's gonna be ruff. You're gonna go for a ride."
foreshadowing upcoming lectures of doom

Rob (student): "Why did you draw the graph sideways like that?"
Ramchandran: "Oh, because I wanted you to get some exercise. Let's do some yoga!" [cricks body to the left]
during ee123 lecture on converting analog filter designs to digital ones

"Essentially I'm giving you the cartoon version of the Parks McClellan algorithm. You can imagine Bugs Bunny pounding on this hump with a hammer and Daffy Duck popping back up!"explaining the Parks McClellan algorithm for filter design, which, uhhh, uses a Remez exchange algorithm. thanks to Bugs Bunny, that's about all i really know about it

random ghetto asian
(hhs student)
[turns around, sees my face, then stumbles in shock]
"Ohh dayaam! That nigga look hella smart!"
while i was walking to honors government (Ms. Gustafson), 12th grade, HHS; pseudo-witnesses: Heidi Dris, Scott Heise

rao, satish, p.h.d.
(ucb cs170 prof)
"Are you guys paying attention? Cuz ... no one's laughing at my jokes."during a cs170 lecture, spring 2002, uc berkeley

"You really, really need to be a nerd to do well in this class. When the solutions come out, just drop what you're doing, don't shower, don't eat, just print that solution and check your answers. And the graders will say you're right, but, you're probably wrong."during a cs170 lecture, after discovering that readers were being too lenient on homework grades

"OK, now this is my ball [draws circle on chalkboard], and this is Ranjit's ball [draws smaller circle on chalkboard]. My ball is bigger than Ranjit's ball."during Facility Location Primal Dual Algorithm cs170 lecture

"I went to Israel over the weekend and I got tied up at the airport. Yea. Should've shaved."during cs170 lecture, explaining the delay in returning our midterms

"Function here, function there, function everywhere!"during the last cs170 lecture about the FFT algorithm, which was completely in rhyme

"First evaluate the best, then evaluate the rest ..." (stares at his paper of rhymes and shakes his head in disgust)ibid; the FFT evaluates even terms and odd terms

"OK, now let me say something by someone competent."ibid; after the rhyme session was over; proceeds to quote ee cummings

"I was going to shave my head before. But I was scared because I didn't know what the shape of my head would be." cs270 lecture, fall 2001, uc berkeley

"And that's Christofides algorithm for... uh... I have no idea. It's cold in here." ibid

"Combinaticians are mathematicians' ugly step brothers, so even when we aspire, we aspire to the bottom." ibid

"Lets pretend we're mathematicians. I don't want to know what's happening, I just want to understand." ibid

"What kind of things would you like to know? ... I'd like to know where my notes are." ibid

"Me and the board are good friends." ibid

"I don't know what it means. I copied it out of a book." ibid

"Lets talk about the travelling sales ... person problem. Debatable whether it is the travelling salesman or travelling salesperson" ibid

"It used to be that you pull a rabbit out of a hat, but now no one's very impressed."ibid

"I went to MIT. I got B's. I thought I was doing pretty well, because I was doing better than my friends. Then I went to grad school there, and people were like, YOU GOT B's?!! Now I'm here sandwiched between these guys that are just, like, ridiculous. Like the best guy to come out of Princeton or the best guy to come out of Harvard. You know ... ridiculous."to me in cs170 office hours, when I asked him about his past

click here for my transcription of the speech from my tape recorder inspirational speech on 25 May 2003, celebrating the Class of 2003 B.A. graduates in computer science at UC Berkeley

sandhu, sunil
"That is the map of love."stanford summer 2005, math 106 (complex analysis), when Dr. Brumfiel sketched the conformal mapping of a heart

schonberg, dan
(ucb ee123 gsi)
"I'm trying to make this class fun for you guys. Because if you're not having fun, what are you here for. You could just go to work at McDonalds and still make money."during ee123 (digital signal processing) discussion

scott, jacob
"The legend will never die!"csua lounge while daniel, jacob, and i were studying for spring 2003 cs172 midterm 2, dreaming of playing soul calibur

"Basically, once you pop, you just can't stop."explaning the behavior of a one-turn pushdown automaton, whose stack may not increase in size once it has begun decreasing


fguan> someone tell me what a gaussian is
fguan> and ill solve that problem
fguan> well... maybe not :-)
fguan> but wth is a gaussian
fguan> is that some physics term?
wwu> gaussian is what i did to your mom last night
jhs_> gaussuan is a probability distribution
fguan> now that's not very flattering
fguan> how badly did she kick your butt?
jhs_> http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GaussianDistribution.html
wwu> gaussian is the normal distribution
wwu> the bell curve
wwu> what you get when you graph teh probab distribution of 
     the sum of iid variables
wwu> also the model for thermal noise in communications
wwu> also gaussian random variables are presereved under 
     linear transformations
wwu> thus EE ppl like them because they're easy to deal 
     with in LTI systems
fguan> geez wwu can you just tell me your stupid
fguan> just once
fguan> put it in all caps
wwu> also linear least square estimator = minimum mean 
     sq. est. when you have gaussian noise
fguan> i need a screen shot for posterity
wwu> which is really great because usually LLSE is not
     nearly as good as MMSE
wwu> but now you combine optimality with an estimator that 
     has a linear form
jhs_> this is one of those dick size war things
jhs_> except with math/phsyics
wwu> lol
jhs_> it's like what sort of shit do I know that you've 
      never even heard of
over IRC channel #csua 8/10/2003
wwu = me ; fguan = frank guan ; jhs = jacob scott

silver, rob
(philadelphia ghost tour guide)
Silver: "[You've] got one of those park ranger badges. Very impressive. I was very intimidated when I saw you in my group."
Wu:"... Yeesss ..."
spoken in seriousness to me at the City Tavern restaurant of Philadelphia. I had just completed Mr. Silver's $12 ghost tour of philadelphia while wearing a junior park ranger badge, an authentic-looking thing I earned by getting an activity sheet for 5-11 yr. olds sufficiently stamped at historic sites around Philly. as soon as i started wearing it while walking the streets, five people were fooled by it within the span of a few hours. one couple thought i was a cop!

subramanian, vivek, p.h.d.
(ucb cs150 prof)
"Hey, I don't remember seeing you. You must not come to lecture!"to student Siddhartha Doshi during an examination

"... and then we'll use some petroleum jelly, which, as you probably know, is the engineer's favorite lubricant."explaning to HKN (eecs honor society) how to make a radio from household materials; he recognized it was a poor choice of words shortly afterwards and laughed

teng, karen
[pointing to a blackboard]
"The function over there should be x2!"
a student correcting Dr. Satish Rao during the last Spring 2002 CS170 lecture, all about FFTs, all in rhyme

thompson, howard
(ucb math55 gsi)
"I don't know how long this homework assignment took you, but it took me about 10 minutes."during math55 (discrete mathematics) office hours while eating a biscuit

tillay, david wayne, p.h.d.
(very inspirational
vjhs science teacher)
"If my attack dogs and barbed wire don't stop them, I've always got my trusty AK47s!"describing his home security system over lunch

"You look so womanlike."admiring teaching aide Barbara while she was lifting a package

toler [mr. toler]
(hhs earth sci. teacher)
"What are you trying to be, some kind of smart ass?"to Geoffrey King, after Geoff criticized the topical enumeration standard used in one of Toler's handouts

"Have you heard of William Wu? He's going to be an amazing scientist one day. He ranks with Einstein."HHS 10th grade Earth Science, boasting about me to bored students; basically during my whole life before berkeley, i was bombarded with stuff like this

tomlin, claire, p.h.d.
(control theory queen)
"You know, you have the funniest website." to me in office hours

tong, lang, p.h.d.
(cornell ee theoretician)
"Well, my students are usually depressed. Usually it is like this, they will be trying to get something done, depressed, depressed, depressed. [sweeps his palm slowly and flatly through the air, illustrating the depression] Then finally after a few months of work, they find something. And then they are happy ... for about a week. Then they find out it doesn't work, or maybe someone has already figured it out, and they're depressed again. And that's how it is."to me in his office when i asked him about his graduate students; during cornell visit day in March 2003 for prospective fall 2003 ece graduate students

Me: "What motivates you to do your research. Why do you do what you do. When you wake up in the morning, what makes you come to work?"
Tong: [pauses]
"Well, basically I don't think I can do anything else. This is all I know how to do."
same visit day

Tong: "So, what are you interested in."
Me: "Well, I really like algorithms."
Tong: [pauses]
"Algorithms huh. What do you mean by algorithms. You mean like, step one do something, step two do something?"
ibid

"I always try to tell my students, when you get a problem, don't read the book. Don't look -- just try to do the problem yourself and see what you get. Then when you're done, you can look in the book and see how stupid you are."ibid

tse, david, p.h.d.
(ucb ee theoretician)
"So, what is this N0 over 2? Why over 2 -- why not just N0? Well, one day when you grow up, you will understand why there is a 2." ee121 lecture, ucb spring 2003; on the power spectral density of additive white gaussian noise

"Low-pass filtering means you are wearing foggy glasses." ibid.

Tse: "Kiran will be having office hours on Thursday. There is some uncertainty principle here, 293 or 297 Cory. We don't know."
Kiran: "It's diversity."
Tse: "It's diversity. Ha. That's very funny."
last ee121 lecture, may 13 2003

"So somebody asked me how did I get into this business, why do I do what I do. Well, it sounds kind of boring, but it was because of this guy [circles R. Gallagher's name on chalkboard]. This guy was my role model. So, I think a role model is important. I thought he was pretty cool. When I first met him, I didn't really understand anything he was saying, but he sounded very wise. Just, everything he said sounded really wise. So I worked with him for 5 years and learned a lot from him. I decided I want to be like this guy." ibid.; I e-mailed Dr. Tse the previous day, suggesting that he spend some of the last lecture explaining what motivates him

trejo, sarah
"Really, they took gullible out of the dictionary?"VJHS

tubb (mr. tubb)
(hhs librarian)
"I wanted to join the army, but I couldn't pass the physical."HHS library, over a game of chess with me; tubb is very tubby

verchiani, dominic, p.h.d.
(hhs spanish teacher)
"I talk to my orange tree, and ask it to grow pears. And it grows pears!"HHS, Spanish II

warlick, carolyn
(hhs bio teacher)
"William, you are my son."11th grade honors biology; she's african-american by the way

"I've taught at 6,200 high schools in my lifetime, and I know 17 languages. When I was teaching in the villages of China, they begged me not to leave. I practice my Cantonese whenever I can."ibid.

"My father has ebony black skin and silver white hair, and eyes as blue as the sky. My mother is a Jew."ibid.

"I have an IQ of one hundred and eighty, and due to my Tay-Sachs disease, it is increasing at an accelerating rate."ibid.

"I have five degrees." [holds up four fingers]ibid.

"Have you guys heard of Junior Seau? He was a student of mine."ibid.

"Mr. Lege and Mr. Machado are very smart men. But they cannot compare to my brilliance."HHS hallway, after I took the AP Calculus exam

"Lege and I went to the same school. But when it came to 'triganalysis', he couldn't handle it."ibid.; upon saying 'triganalysis' she frowned and widened her eyes threateningly, as if it were a subject of great importance

wu, william
"Oh dear."upon discovering that he had to wrestle Maurice Williams (extremely buff little black kid with dreads); VJHS P.E. 9th grade

"It was ... different."after being asked by Geoff King on what it was like to be uncharacteristically kicked out of class along with Matthew Norman for misconduct; VJHS 9th grade honors geometry

"I feel like you're my babysitter taking me home or something."after waking up in the car of Becky Wong, who was driving a very tired Wu home

"You know, happiness is a limited resource in the universe. Leave some for the rest of us!"annoyed with Laura Bucaojit; HHS

[dons the black leather gloves]
[raises fists, clutching plastic knives chucky style]
(screams) "IT'S OJ TIME!!!"
atop the Campanile, executing the Wu-Ong Algorithm For Success, to appear in proceedings of STOC 2003

"By tapping into the lethal grab bag of mathemagical weapons that we have so carefully honed in this class, we will prove this statement, in under 10 minutes. Without further ado, I will begin the proof. Now, in the rare event that one of you actually finds something wrong with this proof, please hold your questions until the very end, at which point I will be happy to argue with you and ultimately convince that you are wrong."stanford summer 2005, the last day of math 106 (complex analysis). i totally wasted the last 20 minutes of everyone's time to "prove" 1=0.

yang, jingcho
"Girl, I knew you must have been Saudi Arabian, because your ass is the bomb."improvising pick-up lines in cory lounge, rapping loudly, disrupting the educational environment; 2001

yang, paul
Wu:[wearing a slick black and red jumpsuit get-up]
"Look at me man. Look at my clothes. Everything matches.
[points index fingers at his shirt, pants, shoes, and hair]
"Black with black, red with red. I look so cool."
Paul: [wearing standard paul attire: light blue jeans and a light gray sweater that reads BERKELEY across the middle in dark blue, all-caps font. sneezing frequently. has long cones of damp kleenex tissue literally hanging out of his nose, which he lodged in there to soak up runny flu water.]
"Yeah?
[pauses. then crosses arms and poses.]
"So do I."
in 125 cory, the sleek cs150 lab donated to berkeley by national semiconductor. we had just returned from visiting the university of michigan's ee graduate school. now we were listening to an audio tape recording of an ee121 lecture given by dr. tse that we had missed while away. paul came back with the flu; it's so damn cold over there. march 2003, UCB

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