Suspicions confirmed

So that one guy, Michael, who I complained about in a past blog entry about seeming decidedly below average? Before I was unsure as to whether I just had standards that were too high or what. Well now I'm no longer unsure. We were working on something in class the other day and he didn't know what a function was. He said, well x=y^2 is a function, right. No, Michael. Wrong. If nothing else, it fails the vertical line test. The graph was on the page right in front of us! He kept saying, well, just because it's not a bijection doesn't mean it's not a function. Oh hooray. You know what a bijection is. Good for you. Now learn what a goddamn function is! Sheesh.

I keep wanting to ask him if he majored in math as an undergrad, where he went to undergrad, and how long ago that was, but I have yet to find a way to introduce that series of questions without sounding like I have no respect for him. I don't have a lot of respect for him, but I don't want it to sound like that. Also, he's not really so bad at pedagogy. He just doesn't know the most basic things about math. Gah! I can't believe they made me take advanced math classes to get into this program and didn't require the same of this below average math performer!