Many years ago (1990 IIRC) I was set in a Fields and Circuits lecture, the lecturer had literally written a book if not the book on the subject (I know this as buying the book, from him, or producing a receipt from the campus book store was a requirement for getting anything above a D on any assignment he marked).  He was working through a long derivation that included both lowercase w and lower case omega (basically a curly w) which looked pretty much identical in his handwriting.  As is common in such lectures he periodically skipped a few steps, one of these skips being immedately before he wrote the final solution on the board.


I'd gotten lost quite early in the derivation so put my hand up to ask for a clarification.  He eventually acknowlewdged me when he complered the derivation but refused to go back and clarify, he said I should see one of his research students and get them to walk me through.  I made an appointment with one of his research students and explained the issue.  As we walked through the derivation we found that he had introduced an error in his first skip and carried it through to the end then apparently just ignored it and written the known solution.  This particular research student had been an undergraduate on the same course I was doing and went back to his notes from that lecture, the same error was there.


This lecturer had been teaching this course for at least 20 years and in all likelihood had been teaching that exact same lecture, with the exact same error, the whole time.  Apparently I was the first student to admit to being lost and needing clarification.


Just goes to prove the adage that a lecture is the transfer of information from the lecturer's notes to the student's notes without passing throguh the brain of either.


I have subsequently discovered that his book is known for requiring a sizeable erratta.

Many years ago (1990 IIRC) I was set in a Fields and Circuits lecture, the lecturer had literally written a book if not the book on the subject (I know this as buying the book, from him, or producing a receipt from the campus book store was a requirement for getting anything above a D on any assignment he marked).  He was working through a long derivation that included both lowercase w and lower case omega (basically a curly w) which looked pretty much identical in his handwriting.  As is common in such lectures he periodically skipped a few steps, one of these skips being immedately before he wrote the final solution on the board.


I'd gotten lost quite early in the derivation so put my hand up to ask for a clarification.  He eventually acknowlewdged me when he complered the derivation but refused to go back and clarify, he said I should see one of his research students and get them to walk me through.  I made an appointment with one of his research students and explained the issue.  As we walked through the derivation we found that he had introduced an error in his first skip and carried it through to the end then apparently just ignored it and written the known solution.  This particular research student had been an undergraduate on the same course I was doing and went back to his notes from that lecture, the same error was there.


This lecturer had been teaching this course for at least 20 years and in all likelihood had been teaching that exact same lecture, with the exact same error, the whole time.  Apparently I was the first student to admit to being lost and needing clarification.


Just goes to prove the adage that a lecture is the transfer of information from the lecturer's notes to the student's notes without passing throguh the brain of either.


I have subsequently discovered that his book is known for requiring a sizeable erratta.