Reddit Experts Teaching Math Majors

That moment when your brain enters mathematical rigor mortis during an exam. The sand of time drips away while you're desperately trying to remember if induction is supposed to start with n=0 or n=1. Meanwhile, your professor probably designed the proof to be solvable in three elegant steps that will seem blindingly obvious once you see the solution. Mathematical trauma is real, folks.

The product of two imaginary numbers giving you a real number? That's not just math—that's mathematical alchemy. Complex numbers (a+bi) multiplied together often produce real results, much like how combining two terrible ideas in the lab sometimes yields a publication. The universe runs on these elegant numerical conspiracies while mathematicians sit back and smugly watch everyone else catch up.

Pure mathematicians would rather draw 25 UNO cards than admit statistics has any mathematical legitimacy. The eternal academic feud continues! These are the same folks who spend decades proving theorems nobody asked for, but heaven forbid they acknowledge the field that actually helps scientists interpret real data. Next thing you know, they'll be claiming applied math is just "physics with extra steps." The mathematical hierarchy is more rigid than a perfectly straight line—and twice as imaginary.

The mathematical purist in their natural habitat! This specimen can be identified by their 10-page LaTeX solutions to problems that could be solved on a napkin. They're not studying math—they're performing a sacred ritual where each symbol must be meticulously defined lest the math gods smite them. Pure mathematicians are like the hipsters of academia: "I was into category theory before it had practical applications." They'll spend three hours explaining why 1+1=2 requires axiomatic set theory while secretly judging your "hand-wavey" proofs. The irony? They mock engineers for being practical while dedicating their lives to abstractions so pure they've transcended usefulness entirely. But don't tell them that—they're too busy formalizing their intuitions to change their epistemic justification for accepting them. Whatever that means.

The mathematical truth bomb that makes calculus students question their existence. Take any finite number—even something ridiculously large like Graham's number—and it's still infinitely closer to zero than to infinity. It's like running a marathon where the finish line keeps moving twice as fast as you. The expression on the person's face perfectly captures that moment when your brain short-circuits trying to grasp the concept of infinity while simultaneously realizing you'll never reach the end of your problem set.

Someone took a red marker to this educational display and decided that π = 3.14! is the new mathematical standard. That's factorial enthusiasm right there. If we actually calculated 3.14!, we'd get approximately 8.9, which would make circles substantially more oblong. Mathematicians worldwide just felt a collective shudder. Einstein's probably rolling in his grave fast enough to generate renewable energy.