In my freshman year of college I took the infamous computer science course ECS 110: Data Structures and Programming. Essentially this class was an introduction to data structures/algorithms, covering things like hash tables and minimum spanning trees. The class was taught by Sean Davis, who was known for his “challenge problems”–programming assignments that were graded not only on correctly but also on efficiency, both in terms of memory usage and runtime. To get an A you had to beat the standard set by the program he wrote, which challenging at best.

Continue reading →

One time when I was working as a GSI a student e-mailed me asking me about the “pumping lamma”. I almost replied with:

The one 'l' lama--he's a priest
The two 'l' llama--he's a beast
And I would bet my silk pajama
That there is no pumping lamma

One assumes he meant the pumping lemma.