Your Mom

Your Mom is a conceit with currency among some circles at Williams. It is probably a derivative of the "Yo Momma"/"Your Mom" jokes that were popular in grade school. It is invariably used with irony. "Your mom" can be used as an unthinking answer to a question or a quick and easy riposte. E.g.,

"I'm going to the baseball game, wanna come?"
"Your mom wants to come."

Your mom reached her peak popularity in 2002-2003, when more than a handful of seniors gave Math colloquia with "Your Mom" in the title. The complete list is:

• “Blowing Up Cubes: Making Your Mom Proud” (Satyan Devadoss, professor)

• “An Examination of Outcome Sensitivity to Deception in a Case-Control Study of Second-Hand Smoking or What to Do If Your Mom Lies about Smoking” (Michael Baoicchi ’03)

• “The 15 Puzzle: How to Stump Your Mom” (Tracy Borawski ’03)

• “Backwards Induction Is Not Robust or Why You Can’t Always Trust Your Mom in a Truel” (Adam Cole '03)

• “Analyzing Dichotomous Dependent Variables Using Logistic Regression, or How to Predict Absolutely Anything about Your Mom” (Jennifer Doleac ’03)

• “Throwing Darts with Your Mom, or, Is the Continuum Hypothesis False?” (Williams Edgar '03)

• “AES: The Best Way to Hide your Internet Movie Collection from Your Mom” (Robert Gonzalez ’03)

• “The Game of “Guess It” or How to Bluff Your Mom Out of 30 Grand” (Thomas Hodgson ’03)

• “HOMFLY and Your Mom: Polynomials and Braids” (Brian Katz '03)

• “The Banach-Tarski Paradox, or How to Turn Your Mom into a Turkey” (Daniel Klasik ’03)

• “On Voting Coalitions and Power Indices. Should Your Mom Be a Politician?” (Edvard Major ’03)

• “The Continuous Wavelet Transform: Wavelets and Your Mom, or, rather, Their Mom” (Mark Rothlisberger ’03)

• “Can You Prove the Existence of Your Mom without Offering a Construction? Algebraic Curves, Invariants, and Hilbert’s Finite Basis” (Eric Schoenfeld ’03)

Sources: http://www.williams.edu/resources/sciencecenter/center/RS03html/RepSci2003fnl-MATHEMAT.html