When I told my son that I had to give a talk about my work to non-mathematicians, he warned me that regular people don't think like mathematicians.
When Daniel Gorenstein was chair, he did mathematics from 5am to 12noon, spending the second half of his working day on administration. When I was chair, I also spent half of my time on research: every other minute.
When I told my mother that I have to give a talk, and was debating what could I possibly say to non-mathematicians, she said: "You got what to wear?".
The Method of Bisection is a sophisticated version of a tool used in fifth grade called "Guess and Check".
I once got a call from a bank, asking me to compute a mortgage, since their computers were down. This was a very depressing moment.
I don't like to end my talk with a 700 million dollar loss, even if it shows the importance of Numerical Analysis.
