Causing Trouble

1. My honors students have first priority at registration. I told them they should sign up for the most popular courses on campus and then sell their spots.


2. One of my students is taking physics for pre-meds. I told her that she should try to send the professor off on a tangent by asking how MRI machines work.


3. On the calculus quiz today, I asked my students the derivatives of tan x, of 1/tan x, and of tan^{-1)x. The class average was a 4/10.


4. On the calculus midterm, I think I will ask my students to evaluate \lim_{x \to 1} \frac{tan^{-1}(x) - \frac{\pi}{4}}{x-1}.