O Tempora!...

[stoutfellow]

Currently, in my calculus class, I'm covering integration techniques. Now, there are techniques that are, so to speak, broad-spectrum, like substitution or integration by parts; they can be brought to bear in a wide variety of situations. But there are other techniques that are more restricted; some, in fact, that work in only one situation, or an extremely restricted set.

I was outlining one such technique today. (If you're curious, it's the one for integrating e^x sin x.) I pointed out that the trick used works only for the one situation. (Well, you can insert constant factors into various points, but it's really just the one.) Then I said, "You might say that it's a one-pony trick."

Pause.

Dead silence.

I turned around and gazed at them for a moment. "Have any of you ever heard the expression, 'one-trick pony'?"

Dead silence. Not one hand rose.

Ne-e-ever mind...

Comments

[hornedhopper.livejournal.com]

_see_ my reference earlier to blank looks given me upon putting the back of my hand to my forehead and asking, "What? Am I Carnack The Great Paralegal?"

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

You have my sincere sympathies. However, fourteen years working various public library reference desks leaves me completely unsurprised at this.

Kind of like the poor guy named Osric who came up to the desk a few weeks ago and was totally shocked when I asked him if his mother was a Shakespeare fan. *He* knew where his name had come from, obviously, but I was apparently the rirst person who'd ever made the connection to his face.

I never did get over the day I saw the Baz Luhrman film of Romeo and Juliet in a theater full of teenyboppers who all gasped when they died, either...

[rikkios.livejournal.com]

I know I'm going to regret this, but ...

I would not have raised my hand. It must be one of those phrases that never made it across the Michigan border. I found a reference to a movie by Paul Simon, but I assume the title came from the film and not vice versa.
So, where does it come from?

By the way, I asked my daughter about it (17 years old, born and raised in Germany) and she immediately responded: "It's a song by Nelly Furtado." Well, it was close - the song is "One-Trick Pony"