I Have A True Aversion To Teaching. The Perennial Business Of A Professor Of Mathematics Is Only To Teach The Abc Of His Science; Most Of The Few Pupils Who Go A Step Further, And Usually To Keep The Metaphor, Remain In The Process Of Gathering Information, Become Only Halbwisser [one Who Has Superficial Knowledge Of The Subject], For The Rarer Talents Do Not Want To Have Themselves Educated By Lecture Courses, But Train Themselves. And With This Thankless Work The Professor Loses His Precious Time.

-Carl Friedrich Gauss

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I Have A True Aversion To Teaching.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

I Have A True Aversion To Teaching. The Perennial Business Of A Professor Of Mathematics Is Only To Teach The Abc Of His Science; Most Of The Few Pupils Who Go A Step Further, And Usually To Keep The Metaphor, Remain In The Process Of Gathering Information, Become Only Halbwisser [one Who Has Superficial Knowledge Of The Subject], For The Rarer Talents Do Not Want To Have Themselves Educated By Lecture Courses, But Train Themselves. And With This Thankless Work The Professor Loses His Precious Time.

Topic

Education

Teaching

Science

That This Subject [of Imaginary Magnitudes] Has Hitherto Been Considered From The Wrong Point Of View And Surrounded By A Mysterious Obscurity, Is To Be Attributed Largely To An Ill-adapted Notation. If, For Example, +1, -1, And The Square Root Of -1 Had Been Called Direct, Inverse And Lateral Units, Instead Of Positive, Negative And Imaginary (or Even Impossible), Such An Obscurity Would Have Been Out Of The Question.

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Roots