the jill formula

so those of you lucky enough may have heard my stories about dr. william staton, my real anaylsis teacher and definitely the coolest mathematics professor in the department, which i realize isn't saying much, because mathematicians develop nerditis at an early age. dr. staton has this tendency to be completely enthralled in his lecture and then pause to ponder, seemingly about how to best clarify his next point, and then suddenly launch into whatever ridiculous thought or story just entered his head. examples:

"... and we can choose our delta to be sufficiently small enough to force our limit to be less than epsilon and in doing so ... did you guys here about this guy that's going around shooting ladies in the ass with a bb gun? i mean, it's weird!"

"... but we have to keep in mind that in our metric space, we don't know what kind of elements we're choosing, but only the distance between ... so austria's trying to revoke arnold's citzenship, huh?"

these are merely examples fresh on my mind, but others like them occur about two to three times per class. today, however, he stopped for a while when he came across what he calls the jill formula, and since the mathematics is literally elementary, i decided to give everyone a bill staton story:

"... so you can see how this (9 - x^2) is the jill formula! [his enthusiasm is met with our blank stares] i didn't tell you guys about the jill formula? [shaking heads] are you sure? ...

well, i was about your age, maybe a little older. i was a first-year grad student, and had just moved in to this apartment housing, and was hanging out with my buddies across the hall, and was introduced to this very attractive young lady named jill. 'bill, jill. jill, bill.'

i think she was a journalism major or something, and she asked me what i was in school for, and i told her and she said 'oh that's so funny that you're a math major'
'why's that funny?'
'i don't know, it just is ... quick what's 32 times 28?'
'896.' [instantly]
'ha, you're so funny.'
'well i'm glad i'm funny, but 32 times 28 is 896."
'yeah, i'm sure it is,' she said, not believing me.

so sure enough, someone got out a calculator and 32 * 28 = 896. and so she was really impressed, but i just got lucky, because she had given me two numbers that worked out wonderfully in the soon-to-be jill formula [writes on board]:

32 * 28 =
(30 + 2) * (30 - 2) =
(30 - 2)^2 =
(30)^2 - (2)^2 = 900 - 4 = 896

and so the whole point of the story is that the difference of two squares came to be known in the department as the jill formula, because ... well ... after that, jill thought i was a genius. and, well, jill was pretty easy on the eyes, and ... uh ... how can i put this delicately? ... it, um ... it paid off for her to think that i was a genius."

total badass.