For all my teachers it's hard to know what to say because individuals are many-faceted and complex, and their shortcomings can often seem less than one's own, but, independent of all the various considerations, I feel one point of gratitude should be made about Mr. Alger.

Amid all the idiosynchrasies of the teaching and style, and whatever else, for some reason Mr. Alger motivated our math class to add a whole additional class by getting up mornings  at 6:00 A.M. for the educational TV course on probability and statistics from Harvard.  For me this was perhaps the most powerful educational initiative of any of my teachers.  Significantly, the course included elementary probability rather than dwelling only on statistics in the way that's typical of so many college courses. If so inclined you could take what was taught to Vegas casinos and make millions as I believe a few exceptional MIT students have actually done.  But, more importantly, the probability side of this course, the idea that you could simply count things and then reason toward predictions from the tables,  turned out to be the foundation for so much that has happened in the span of our careers: even the automatic rice cooker., but also automatic speech recognition and myriad interesting areas of continuing invention.  I can't imagine a more productive offering for anyone with technical interests.

I'm aware that there are many sides to any story and any good point can be overshadowed from another perspective.  My main thought here is that for me it was beneficial when a teacher asked why not get up early and do something extra.  I didn't come anywhere near mastering the material, but in the end It really paid off.