Dennis Schneider

Dennis Schneider is an intimidating mind, and an intimidating professor. If you can keep up, he is an excellent one. He rules the classroom with an iron tongue-in-cheek, but is kind and personable outside it. Prof. Schneider was well known for his chain smoking earlier in his long Knox tenure, but has quit, or at least switched to nicotine gum. You can tell that you have said something extraordinarily stupid in his class when he immediately gets out another piece.

D.M.S. (don't call him D.M.S. to his face) helps write Mathematica and has for many years. He is very proud of this, or at least Mathematica itself, so tread carefully when badmouthing the program in his presence. He hates graphic calculators and similar.

Prof. Schneider wrote a book on Linear Algebra in the '80s. It's a good book despite its horrendous cover. If you can find it (I think they still have a copy in SMC Lib), check it out. I guess you could buy it online? http://www.alibris.com/search/books/isbn/0024768103

D.M.S. seems tough, but that's cause he used to be a bad seed, all such as hanging out in pool halls in Detroit, where he grew up.

Classic D.M.S. quotes

• "This is a volume problem, these are your friends from the old neighborhood."
• "You learned Trig in preschool; Algebra was prenatal care. You were solving the quadratic formula in your mother's womb!"
• "Don't be so hooty tooty, err, hoity toity."
• "It's like we say back in Detroit..."
• "None of you could ever be President...you're all too smart!"
• <graphic sounds of sniffing> "... I smell a theorem!"