Did you take calculus at the Rock? If you haven't already encountered it, I emphatically disrecommend Serge Lang's _A first course in calculus_ which was the textbook used for Calculus I and II.
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ps. Hi! JA/89 — did we overlap?
aug 19, 2025, 12:46 am • 1 0 • view
'02, so definitely not!
aug 19, 2025, 12:49 am • 1 0 • view
Indeed not! 🤣 Still, always nice to meet more members of the conspiracy.
aug 19, 2025, 12:52 am • 1 0 • view
He dropped in on elementary functions class back circa 1989 (I forget now who was teaching it: maybe Altman?) and was unpleasant enough to make me reconsider taking calc there. 🤣
aug 19, 2025, 12:35 am • 2 0 • view
Decades later I met some people who knew him professionally and they explained to me that I had had but the smallest possible taste of Serge Lang being abrasive to people. Fucking math professors, man. Useful at a societal level but mad as hatters. 🤣
aug 19, 2025, 12:35 am • 4 0 • view
I have doubts about usefulness on a societal level for Serge Lang specifically, given his AIDS denial activism and general unpleasantness.
aug 19, 2025, 12:48 am • 2 0 • view
JFC I’d somehow managed to not know about that particular wrinkle. Can’t say it was out of character though.
aug 19, 2025, 12:53 am • 2 0 • view
Yeah, he was insistent that the only reason we think that HIV causes AIDS is that "biologists are bad at math". He was an activist for other, far more reality-based things when he was younger, but always in incredibly abrasive ways.
aug 19, 2025, 12:58 am • 2 0 • view
I later ran into someone who was a huge fan of his work in an area of mathematics that I don't remember the name of, and he was horrified that anywhere was teaching intro calculus using Serge Lang's calculus textbook.
aug 19, 2025, 12:46 am • 1 0 • view
Lang was Altman's PhD advisor, that would make sense. He visited campus while I was a student and gave two talks, one on math and one on troublemaking. My roommate and I created and distributed bingo sheets for the latter.
aug 19, 2025, 12:43 am • 1 0 • view
Nope, I have/had an arithmetic-focused learning disability that meant I never made it past Algebra II in formal education, but turns out I can very effectively self-teach myself math with the aid of code (go figure)
aug 19, 2025, 1:56 pm • 2 0 • view