What is your favorite pattern?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question.

What is your favorite pattern?

Visual patterns:

• checkered
• paisley
• checkered
• geometric
• stripes
• plaid

Math patterns:

• a hexagonal lattice
• fractals but only when graphed on the TI-84
• Fibonacci #s
• fibonaci [sic] sequence 
• Mandelbrot set
• compound interest
• Minkowsky
• Pascal's Triangle
• the one that looks like this [scribbled-out drawing] NVM I messed it up but it's like a fractal with a lot of circles
• set of interesting numbers

Social patterns seemed to be mostly self-referential descriptors:

• women self-selecting out of CS (not)
• sleep, eat, soccer (repeat)
• sleep, eat, sleep, eat, sleep, eat (repeat)

The uncategorizable "randomness" gets a mention, since: is that a pattern? Ditto to "object-oriented" and the student who wrote simply "hate patterns", as if adding a subject to the verb would take too much effort. You hate so much that it suppresses your verbal skills. Apparently.

A tip of my hat to the person clever enough to say "baldness".

I looked up the symbols to transcribe this as faithfully to the handwritten original as possible: "D^♭Δ7E⁷AΔ7FΔ7".

The Award for Narrative Convenience and Irksomeness goes to the person whose favorite pattern is "deus ex machina".

The Recurringly Attempting to Get Into the Professor's Good Graces Plaque goes to the student whose favorite pattern is "one of good attendance".

This post is dedicated to the student who diligently checked this blog --- although often through a VPN, so that I wouldn't know who was reading --- and then came to my office throughout the semester to ask me why I wasn't updating it.


This post's theme word is antimetabole, "a literary and rhetorical device in which a phrase or sentence is repeated, but in reverse order." The linguistic patterns woven into the antimetabole dazzled and amazed.

What is your quest?

I take attendance by having the students answer a question. This one has occurred previously.

What is your quest?

References first, of course:

• To seek the holy grail.
• blue?
• blue! no, wait...
• To catch them all

Then things that might be references, but the Stodgy Professor Didn't Get It:

• To catch the golden shoop
• neze!
• :)

Locally-relevant quests:

• to participate in a really good high five
• to pass this class with flying colors

This attendance sheet moved a bit slowly throughout the room, so some people responded with hyper-local, context-sensitive quests:

• To make sure everyone gets this [attendance sheet] before class ends
• TO SIGN IN
• to remember to fill out the attendance sheet

Achievable, a bit self-centered, but what would YOU say if you were put on the spot for a quest?

• get the platinum trophy
• straight As
• have a good shoulder
• Have a good time
• 8 hrs of sleep a night
• To either see the world burn or live on an island with access to League of Legends servers and golden retrievers.
• graduate
• Schedule sandwiches to eat by myself

Noble quests that I hope succeed:

• To eliminate suffering and stigma caused by mental illness.

Not really achievable, because of the limitations of reality:

• frisbee around the world
• to make travelling from US to London as fast as 10 min
• To do literally everything
• to reach my asymptote
• to pet every dog

Quests which can only be awarded retrospectively (after death, or possibly after the end of time itself):

• to eat as much ice cream as possible
• Live a fulfilling life
• Make the best cup of coffee ever

Today's Recursive Award of Recursively Awarding Recursive Awards of ... goes to the quest "to find out my next quest". (Look! You achieved it! Now you achieved it again!)

The Noble Quest that I absolutely endorse and support goes to "To eliminate suffering and stigma caused by mental illness."

This post's theme word is reeve (n), "a local official." Upon her deathbed, Cynthia was delighted to hear the reeve pronounce, "You have officially eaten as much ice cream as possible!" whereupon she died of satisfaction, though the coroner later disputed the fact by stating "Sugar overdose."