Exciting Happenings in the Math Department

Today I had my computer churning along and working on a calculation that was going slower than it needed to because it involved such a large dataset that my computer only had 11MB of memory free, so the whole thing was swap-swap-swap-swap-swap. I think in probably spent more time moving thing in and out of memory than actually calculating.

This long calculation was well-timed so that I could attend a reception in the math department to honor the woman who had been my secretary (shared) for the past five years. After 30 years of service to the math department, she is retiring. Yes, this means that my replacement will not get to call upon my secretary's years of experience of dealing with the sorts of things that need to be dealt with.

While eating the math department's supermarket cake, I also learned that the math department is expecting a record number of new graduate students. Speculation is that the math department could end up with more new graduate students than my secretary had years of service.

Good luck to whomever is dealing with the training and supervision of new instructors! Good luck to the freshmen!