You kids and your six trig functions. Back in my day we had only one, and we used it for everything. sin(θ) sin(π/2 - θ) sin(θ)/sin(π/2 - θ) 1/sin(θ) 1/sin(π/2 - θ) sin(π/2 - θ)/sin(θ)

a∈A {a}⊆A {a}∈𝒫(A) *sigh*

I've been in academia for about 33 years, but even today when I hear or read "P.I.", my brain first thinks of Tom Selleck.

Our dog freaks out whenever she hears the doorbell. Trick-or-treating in this neighborhood starts soon. It's going to be an interesting evening.

arxiv.org/abs/2510.19961 /Loops with squares in two nuclei/ Michael Kinyon (@profkinyon.bsky.social) , J.D. Phillips

The more coauthors a paper has, the more typos it will have. It seems counterintuitive but each author assumes the others are the ones responsible for carefully checking everything.

Abel's line "it appears to me that this theorem admits exceptions" is one of my favorite sentences in the history of mathematics.

Given a ladder, if: * you know how to get on the first step, and * if you're on a step, you know how to get on the next one, then you know how to climb the ladder. #induction

Me: Canvas is down! How will I teach my class? K: You hardly use Canvas at all and you never use it in the classroom, so what difference does it make? Me: I guess I'll cancel class and go hiking. K: But... Me: SEE YOU LATER, I'M TAKING THE DOG WITH ME

Inserting a paragraph break in the middle of a sentence because I like to live wild and free, and I want to see if my coauthor notices.

Coauthor: OK, so that means these elements lie in the subset A. Me: Do they tell the truth outside the subset A? C: ... Why do I even talk to you? Me: I don't know

I don't have a learning style but I am definitely a visual forgetter.

Found at the end of a proof in this manuscript I've been working on: "... we have the desi red result." No lie, for a little over a half minute, I puzzled over what I could have possibly meant by "desi red".

Concluding \begin{itemize} with \end{enumerate} like the buffoon that I am.

Integration by vibes is the best technique

Remembering a professor who, in all sincerity, advised me, a grad student, that if you don't start a journal at some point in your career, you haven't succeeded. Even at that point in my nascent career, I realized the guy was full of shit.

Me: In this problem, if you're not sure what properties of the integers you're allowed to assume, just ask me. Student: Can I assume Fermat's Last Theorem? Me: Is that going to help you in some way? S: Well, no, I just wondered if I can assume it anyway. Me: 🙄

I just learned a little bit about iatromathematics and now I feel like I should lie down for a little while. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iatroma...

@timhenke.bsky.social How's your ã? One of my closest friends is a João and it took me a lot of practice to get his name right.

Maybe my students will pay more attention if I have my class autotuned

Every time I teach integral calculus, I forget one of Wolfram Alpha's defaults: ∫1/√(1-x2)dx = arctan(x/√(1-x2)) + C instead of arcsin(x) + C Invariably someone asks why it does that, I reply I don't know, write a note to myself to find out, and then... Repeat the next time I teach the class

I just spent way too long trying come up with a joke combining "p-adic" with "Paddington Bear" and completely failed, so I decided instead to tell a self-deprecating story about how long I spent working on the joke.

Proven: strange patterns in the prime numbers that require chaos to understand. And a way to beat a 200 year old prime-hypothesis. My latest for Scientific American! www.scientificamerican.com/article/math... #Science #ScienceNews #Research #stem #ScienceWriting #Math #Discovery #BigIdeas 👩🏾‍🔬🧪

skircle versus skycle

The title of my next paper: On Whether Beginning a Paper Title with "On" is Acceptable

the capsaicin of nonassociativity

Just now looking over a worksheet I created a few years ago, I found a sentence I am surprised I haven't re-used: "Your grade will depend on the journey, not the destination."

Me: It is common to use first person plural, "we", in mathematical writing. It suggests the author and the reader are working together through the mathematics. Students: *skeptical looks* Me: Alternatively, it's the royal we as in "We are not amused" S: *enthusiastic nodding*

I hope someday people refer to "Kinyon's Third Theorem" and can describe it easily, but the reason no can remember what the First or Second Theorem were is that they never existed.

I'm wondering if my life isn't an idle game after all. I guess I could click once or twice and see what happens.

Shin Megami Tensor

People get angry at me for being a determinist, but it's not like I chose this life

Today, as I do in every class, I said to my students: "Actual competence doesn't matter! It's the 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 of competence that's important!" This always gets a laugh, but hopefully by the end of the term, they realize they can only appear competent in a mathematics class if they actually are

I just learned that a planar tree with one vertex is called a corolla, and I keep wondering if the Toyota Planar Tree With One Vertex would have been quite as successful.

One of those days when I feel I need \qquad on all sides of me.

I was going to make a Rapture joke, but I typed Rupture instead and now that's my eschatology.

I tend to write tentatively, inserting "tend to" or "probably" in places where someone else would probably write more assertively.

Essentially what Donald Knuth argued in the March 1998 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society. His letter is reproduced here: micromath.wordpress.com/2008/04/14/d...

Today's class chant: The negation of an implication is a conjunction (repeat ad nauseum) When I want complete silence, I'll just ask them what it means.

Student: What does "equipollent" mean? Me: It means that the amount of pollen in the air is the same both inside and outside. S: ... S: Have you been planning that one for a while? Me: *sigh* Yeah. Just let me have this, ok?

Happy Fall Equinox Day, the day I tell the same joke I told six months ago, changing just one word.

S: What did you say the numbers on the integral sign are called? Me: Limits of integration S: Does that have anything to do with limits like we learned about before? Me, trying to stop myself from mentioning improper integrals to an absolute beginner: No.

Note that beginning a sentence with "Note that" is often unnecessary.

If students are not coming to your office hours even though they should, try legally changing your name to Generative AI. Then they can say they asked a Generative AI for help without fear of reprisal.

It's really hard to play Sudoku without the Law of the Excluded Middle

One of these things is not like the others, WolframAlpha

Thinking of changing my name to It'sOnTheSyllabus.

Yes, Dear Student, group theory certainly would be easier if Sylow p-subgroups of order p^k for k>1 always had pairwise trivial intersection.

A: Do you have any money? Me: Yes, I have any money.

Still in Australia. Forgot my credit card in my current apartment, so I paid for some groceries with cash. From the cashier's reaction, especially while they were fumbling for my change, I gather they hadn't seen actual currency in a very long time.