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Quotes About Calculations

Probability doesn't make mistakes; people using probability make mistakes.
~ Charles Wheelan
Engineers ... are not superhuman. They make mistakes in their assumptions, in their calculations, in their conclusions. That they make mistakes is forgivable; that they catch them is imperative. Thus it is the essence of modern engineering not only to be able to check one's own work but also to have one's work checked and to be able to check the work of others.
~ Henry Petroski
Lafayette had a powerful insight, detecting in slaveholders a combination of "prejudices, Habits, and Calculations."26 This combination acted as their engine, in place of a conscience. Racism ratified their power, as did the dispensations of Providence. They were precursors of the Ayn Rand protagonist of the twentieth century.
~ Henry Wiencek
She swore she could prove it mathematically, but the calculations required were so involved that they would have required a computer the size of the universe, running for a length of time that would have taken them past the projected heat-death of the universe, to work them out. It was pretty much the definition of moot.
~ Lev Grossman
A second problem in radiocarbon dating is that the carbon 14 / carbon 12 ratio of the atmosphere is in fact not rigidly constant but fluctuates slightly with time, so calculations of radiocarbon dates based on the assumption of a constant ratio are subject to small systematic errors.
~ Jared Diamond
I was an accountant ... I rewrote the world through numbers. The world still had the same number of boats and trees and bottles of wine and loaves of bread after I finished my calculations, and yet all of a sudden people found themselves broke, or suddenly rich.
~ Unknown
Factors in the art of warfare are: First, calculations; second, quantities; third, logistics; fourth, the balance of power; and fifth, the possibility of victory is based on the balance of power.
~ Sun Tzu
It is comforting that travel should have an architecture, and that it is possible to contribute a few stones to it, although the traveller is less like one who constructs landscapes -- for that is a sedentary task -- than like one who destroys them. . . . But even destruction is a form of architecture, a deconstruction that follows certain rules and calculations, an art of disassembling and reassembling, or of creating another and different order.
~ Claudio Magris
I am ashamed to tell you to how many figures I carried these calculations [of Pi], having no other business at the time
~ Isaac Newton
The professor urged upon Fred that to base one's calculations on unobservables - such as God, such as the soul, such as the atom, such as the elementary particle - was nothing more than a comforting weakness. 'I don't deny that all human beings need comfort. But scientists should not indulge themselves on quite this scale.
~ Penelope Fitzgerald
Amit a moralisták az emberi szív mélységeinek neveznek, voltaképpen csalóka gondolatok, az egyéni érdek önkéntelen rezdülései. Ezek a lelki bonyodalmak, amelyekr?l annyi üres szó esik, ezek a hirtelen pálfordulások, nem egyebek élvezeteink javára végzett számításoknál.
~ Honore de Balzac
A statistician made a few calculations and discovered that since the birth of our nation more lives had been lost in celebrating independence than in winning it.
~ Curtis Billings
calculations
~ Lisa Randall
Have you heard this classic accounting joke? Question: What's the definition of an accountant? Answer: Someone who solves a problem you didn't know you had in a way you don't understand.
~ Unknown
I will not live in a realm where calculations of power supersede justice and law - regardless of how inconvenient that may be to the Crown.
~ Jim Butcher
Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations are wrong and their figures are unable to describe the heavens, or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters.
~ Italo Calvino
Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong and their figures are unable to describe the heavens, or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters.
~ Italo Calvino
It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.
~ J. R. R. Tolkien
For a continuation bet to be a profitable move, the amount of the bet has to be carefully chosen in comparison to the pot. In essence, you are hoping to buy the pot right now. If you overpay, you'll lose too much money when your opponent calls with a hand better than yours. If you underpay, you'll be offering your opponent correct pot odds to stick around with a drawing hand. Neither situation is good, so the exact amount of the bet is very important.
~ Unknown
It is very distressing that anyone would look at these matters from a political viewpoint. Core beliefs about when life begins and ends are far too important for any such calculations.
~ Mac Thornberry
American stuntmen are smart - they think about safety. When they do a jump in a car, they calculate everything: the speed, the distance... But in Hong Kong, we don't know how to count. Everything we do is a guess. If you've got the guts, you do it. All of my stuntmen have gotten hurt.
~ Jackie Chan
La añoranza es calculada mediante cifras también. Distancia multiplicada por el factor Amor.
~ Unknown
All the while your brain is performing up to ten quadrillion calculations per second using only ten watts of power.5 A computer would require a gigawatt of power produced by a nuclear power plant to pull off the same performance.
~ Mark Batterson
#3 pencils and quadrille pads.
~ Seymour Cray