Winter quotes

"It's a machine learning paper, it can't be that hard."

"She just seemed totally unhinged, like a swivel-eyed loon." 

"You picked the same avatar as me!"
"It assigned me a gray-haired lady in glasses automatically!"

"I'm invisible!"
"Zoom has started to blur you into the couch in the background."

"Wow, four people and one kitchen? This is... this is better than we had in Soviet Union, seven families and one kitchen."

"We're the same age! I always thought that you were so much older when we were kids."

"One more, since you were having a bit of a cock-festival earlier: there's a book called 'Fifty Ways to Eat Cock' and it's recipes for cooking chicken."

"Oh, this looks good... wait, that's dog food."

"Basically you put a cookie in soup and put it in the oven."

This post's theme word is grangousier (n), "a big eater" or "a gullible person, who will swallow anything." This holiday season, bake cookies for your neighborhood grangousier!

Final exam

The exam was printed in color. Partly this was to make the diagrams pretty, partly this was as a hint that students should be thinking about colors. Adjacent to some colored text, a student wrote "LOVED THIS HINT, THANK YOU!" which is a very positive piece of exam-writing feedback to me. In a proof for this problem, another student wrote "The hint of coloring the 4 houses the different colors further solidifies [claim they were making]."

Down the margins of the final, one student entered a philosophical reverie: "What is 'correct'? Can approx algs ever even get there"

When asked to give an example, one student wrote "I can't fight the urge to say ∅". This was, in fact, a correct example.

I offered students the opportunity to write a joke. I am not sure these all make sense?

• Solving NP-complete algorithms is like finding a CS prof that doesn't wear khakis. Theoretically possible, but in practice it's too hard.
• The biggest dream for an NPC is to become P(layable).
• Why did the NP-complete problem become a therapist?
  It thought it had a lot of experience with unsolvable isues.
• "That's NPC behavior."
  Normal person interpretation: someone is acting funky like a Non-Player Character.
  Theoretical Computer Scientist interpretation: How did they figure out how to live non-deterministically?
• Why buy cereal from the NP-hard aisle of NP store?
  It's part of an NP-complete breakfast.
• I went to the doctor for my (N)ose (P)ain Problem. He took way too long to find a solution.
• This joke is NP-complete, reducible to everyone else's, hard to understand, and has a polytime verifier. Verifier: print("HAHAHAHAHAHA")
• Why did NP not cross the road?
  Because it wasn't efficient to do so.
• What did NP-complete say to NP-hard?
  Don't worry, your polynomial time is coming!
• What did Vertex Cover say to Independent Set?
  You NP-complete me <3
• Why did the NP-complete problem go to the party?
  It thought it would be a clique-free environment.
• Once NP-complete is verified on tiktok, it has its own verifier.
• A: Did you hear Neal Patrick Harris found his long lost brother, of the same name, Neil Patrick Harris?
  B: Oh wow, how nice!
  A: I know, right! They said now that they found each other, they both feel Neil Patrick-complete!
• Why was Lila late for the CS41 final (theoretically)?
  Because she was stuck in traffic and navigating it was NP-complete!
• Teacher: Prove this problem is NP-complete.
  Student: I just "completed" a solution, so it must be NP-complete.
• Q: What do you call a math-inspired, environmentally-minded tap-dancing group?"
  A: "Al Gore Rhythms: An Inconvenient Troupe"
• Q: Why did the programmer break up with NP-completeness?
  A: Because NP-completeness took too long to solve their relationship problems; she wasn't efficient enough.
• It is verifiable that I will complete my homeworks for ALGO but it can not be done in polynomial time. ALGO TO SCHEDULE ALGO Homework is NP-complete.
• Why did the algorithms problem not talk?
  It was NPC(omplete).
  idk if this makes sense, i don't play video games

I take issue with

• P=NP only if N=1

And indeed, another (more pedantic) student wrote:

• P=NP
  (N-1)P = 0
  N=1 or P=0

I was offered some non-jokes:

• I like to imagine that all of the NP-complete problems are friends with one another, because they can't feel complete without being reducible to one another.
• I am Not Proud of this exam, but it is Completed.
• I'm NP-complete with this test.
• Ironic for it to be NP-complete but we don't know if P=NP.
• I wish you were NP-complete so that all of our problems could be reduced to you.
• I can decide in polynomial time whether a graph is 3-colorable.

That last student is powerful in a troubling way.

When prompted, "Write a joke about NP-completeness." the most wry student in the class wrote:

• I would tell you one, but once you've heard one you've heard them all.
• I would write a joke about NP-completeness, but once you've heard one you've hard them all!
• I once heard an NP-complete joke but once you've heard one, you've heard them all.
• My verifier could assess a good joke if it saw one, but I don't think this problem can be done in deterministic polynomial time. :)

This post's theme word is lexiphanic (adj), "using pretentious words and language." Very few students attempted lexiphanic answers to test questions.