Quotes About Computation

A classical computation is like a solo voice—one line of pure tones succeeding each other. A quantum computation is like a symphony—many lines of tones interfering with one another.

Our classical intuition tells us that analog computation is intrinsically continuous and digital computation is intrinsically discrete. As with many other classical intuitions, this one is incorrect when applied to quantum computation. Analog quantum computers and digital quantum computers are one and the same device.

The computational universe is not an alternative to the physical universe. The universe that evolves by processing information and the universe that evolves by the laws of physics are one and the same. The two descriptions, computational and physical, are complementary ways of capturing the same phenomena.

Many of Ronald A. Fisher's ideas were solutions to computational problems caused by the limitations of the era's desk calculators.

I think it will be but a very modest computation to say, that of the products of the earth useful to the life of man, nine-tenths are the effects of labour: nay, if we will rightly estimate things as they come to our use, and cast up the several expenses about them, what in them is purely owing to nature, and what to labour, we shall find, that in most of them ninety-nine hundredths are wholly to be put on the account of labour.

Design matters a lot when it is leveraged with a deep understanding of computation and the unique set of possibilities it brings.

A third position has been called strong Al. When the Mind As Computer metaphor is believed as a deep scientific truth, the true believers interpret the ontology and the inferential patterns that the metaphor imposes on the mind as defining the essence of mind itself. For them, concepts are formal symbols, thought is computation (the manipulation of those symbols), and the mind is a computer program.

If you think of your life as a kind of computation, it's quite abundantly clear that there's not going to be a final answer and there won't be anything particularly wonderful about having the computation halt!

Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal, if you don't use your thumbs.

At the present time there exist problems beyond our ability to solve, not because of theoretical difficulties, but because of insufficient means of mechanical computation.

From the time I was 7, when I purchased my first calculator, I was fascinated by the idea of a machine that could compute things.

The rule for working out prime numbers is very simple, but no one has ever worked out a simple formula for telling you whether a very big number is a prime number or what the next one will be. […] Prime numbers is what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.

I'd hate to do arithmetic, George thought to himself, in a system based on fourteen.

Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin.

In the deceptively modest volume you are now holding, von Neumann articulates his model of computation and goes on to define the essential equivalence of the human brain and a computer. He acknowledges the apparently deep structural differences, but by applying Turing's principle of the equivalence of all computation, von Neumann envisions a strategy to understand the brain's methods as computation, to re-create those methods, and ultimately to expand its powers.

Any computing machine that is to solve a complex mathematical problem must be 'programmed' for this task. This means that the complex operation of solving that problem must be replaced by a combination of the basic operations of the machine.

As he describes each mechanism in the brain, he shows how a modern computer could accomplish the same operation, despite the apparent differences. The brain's analog mechanisms can be simulated through digital ones because digital computation can emulate analog values to any desired degree of precision (and the precision of analog information in the brain is quite low).

I have always been convinced that the only way to get artificial intelligence to work is to do the computation in a way similar to the human brain. That is the goal I have been pursuing. We are making progress, though we still have lots to learn about how the brain actually works.

I think of the brain as a computational device: It has a bunch of little components that perform calculations on some small aspect of the problem, and another part of the brain has to stitch it all together, like a tapestry or a quilt.

Well, say you write a handler and it requires a lot of computation — that is, something that takes a long time to compute. As long as your handler is chugging along computing, I'm sitting around waiting until it's done. Only then can I continue with the queue.

The contribution of mathematics, and of people, is not computation but intelligence.

Their math lacks integers!" "As far as we can tell," Jennifer added. "They don't use whole numbers at all. Only 'smears,' they call them.

Computers are very powerful tools, but in the simulated world of the computer, everything has to be calculated.

He did not believe in luck at all, good or bad. Gamblers believed in luck, and he was not a gambler. Never had been, never would be. John Henry Holliday believed in mathematics, in statistics, in the computation of odds. Fifty-two cards in a deck. Make it easy. Say it's fifty. Any card has a 2 percent chance of being dealt from a full deck. Keep track of what's out. Adjust the probabilities as the hand progresses.