<p>^ to be fair, when the hell do you do that in class??</p>
<p>it could be a palor trick (like learning tricks to multiply two big numbers by eachother really fast)</p>
<p>or he could be really smart and knows this along with other palor tricks</p>
<p>Nah, it wasn’t a parlor trick. He just looked at the polynomial and factored it. It wasn’t something he had prepared in his notes.</p>
<p>FWIW, that didn’t impress me as much as his ability to determine the probability of a particular problem I asked him about (for a different class). I just finished a test for a different class and was discussing a difficult problem with a classmate when he walked by. I gave him the problem verbally and he was able to answer it rather quickly. It was a difficult combination to do in your head. If I remember correctly part of the problem was C15,7. Which is 15!/7!(15-7)!. He spit the number out so quick it took me by complete surprise. Try doing (15<em>14</em>13<em>12</em>11<em>10</em>9)/(7<em>6</em>5<em>4</em>3*2) in your head in under two seconds.</p>
<p>^that is definitely doable in under a second with a parlor trick.</p>
<p>OminousRun, I’m guessing your talking about Dr. Reid at UCF?..and yes he is easily one of the most intelligent professors I have ever come across. Back in his undergrad years kids would ask him to compute really obscure fractions in his head and her would spit them out with reasonable precision, being a two time putnam fellow is also an achievement, only a few people in history have accomplished it before.</p>
<p>You nailed it Brandon. Amazingly intelligent man.</p>
<p>On a side note, I’ve got to start learning parlor tricks…they could come in handy on my next exam ;-)</p>
<p>and you could scam tourists</p>
<p>my high school history teacher.
he went to oxford and published a book about Christianity in rome.</p>