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Raymond Matson

Welcome to my website!

Welcome! I'm Raymond Matson. Here, you’ll find information about my research interests, background, and teaching resources from previous classes I’ve taught.

"You may not like it but \(-\frac{1}{12}\mathbb{Z}\) is an ideal." - Complex Analysis Memes for Holomorphic Teens

Two algebraic geometers are investigating a crime. One turns to the other and says, "we still don't know what the motives are." - Pseudoholomorphic Memes for Quasi-Isometric Teens

"Decategorification started out as a stroke of mathematical genius. Only later did it become a matter of dumb habit, which we are now struggling to overcome by means of categorification." - John Baez

"These will eventually come into thermal equilibrium forming blackbody radiation at the temperature of the cosmological horizon — perhaps about \(10^{-30}\) Kelvin or so. This is why it's really a bad idea to keep putting things off for tomorrow." - John Baez

"To confuse you further, or educate... I guess that's the standard word to use these days..." - John Baez

"'Obvious' is the most dangerous word in mathematics." - Eric Bell

"But category theory, like the New York marathon, is more about the journey and what you see along the way." - Eugenia Cheng

"It's really more intelligent to be able to simplify things than to complicate them. Even if some people think it makes you look stupid." - Eugenia Cheng

"People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of." - Paulo Coelho

"There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure." - Paulo Coelho

"When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too." - Paulo Coelho

"That there is a world of difference between what we see, and what is." - Anna DeWitt

"Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability." - Edsger Dijkstra

"I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper than of a sword or pistol." - Alexandre Dumas

"Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory and the second philosophy." - Alexandre Dumas

"I have the advantage of having found out how hard it is to get to really know something, how carefully you have to be about checking your experiments, how easy it is to make mistakes and fool yourself. I know what it means to know something." - Richard Feynman

"I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something." - Richard Feynman

"We decided that 'trivial' means 'proved.' So we joked with the mathematicians: 'We have a new theorem- that mathematicians can prove only trivial theorems, because every theorem that's proved is trivial.'" - Richard Feynman

"The best way to guarantee a loss is to quit." - Morgan Freeman

"In math, there are no coincidences. It's our job to discover why." - Jacob Greenstein

"A company that focuses solely on profits ultimately betrays both itself and society." - Bill Hewlett and David Packard

"Investing in new product development and expanding the product catalog are the most difficult things to do in hard times, and also among the most important." - Bill Hewlett and David Packard

"The biggest competitive advantage is to do the right thing at the worst time." - Bill Hewlett and David Packard

"The greatest success goes to the person who is not afraid to fail in front of even the largest audience." - Bill Hewlett and David Packard

"Girls are capable of doing everything men are capable of. Sometimes they have more imagination than men." - Katherine Johnson

"The Committee which was set up in Rome for the unification of vector notation did not have the slightest success, which was only to have been expected." - Felix Klein

"The statement sometimes made, that there exist only analytic functions in nature, is in my opinion absurd." - Felix Klein

"God made the integers; all else is the work of man." - Leopold Kronecker

"As you will find in multivariable calculus, there is often a number of solutions for any given problem." - John Nash

"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." - Alfréd Réyni

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Seneca

"Concerned with forms we gain a healthy disrespect for their authority." - Michael Shub

"The system is always leaking, and we keep having to add water to keep it ahead of the game." - Jim Simons

"The things we are doing will not go away. We may have bad years, we may have a terrible year sometimes. But the principles we’ve discovered are valid." - Jim Simons

"When I was growing up, I knew I wanted to be a mathematician, but I had no idea what that entailed." - Terence Tao

"Geometry is magic that works." - René Thom

"Let \(m = x + y\) where '\(+\)' is the usual multiplication." - Elliott Vest

"If all roads lead to Rome, then the Roman empire is path connected." - Stefano Vidussi

"Whoever decided to put x after f really messed it up for the rest of us." - Stefano Vidussi

"I never said to be like me, I say to be like you and make a difference." - Brian Warner

"The imagination is precious. Don't lose it. Don't lose the child in you." - Brian Warner

"The introduction of numbers as coordinates... is an act of violence..." - Hermann Weyl

"Topology has the peculiarity that questions belonging in its domain may under certain circumstances be decidable even though the continua to which they are addressed may not be given exactly, but only vaguely, as is always the case in reality." - Hermann Weyl

"The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control out thought of concrete fact." - Alfred Whitehead