Quotes About Measurement

Can someone's true value really be estimated? Maybe there needs to be an Edmunds.com for people on TV. That would be funny and possibly cruel.

I was number one in the ratings four times last year and twice this season. What could be more damn equal than that? If they get any more equal, I don't want it.

Oh, measure it all out! Acceptable levels of misery and suffering!' The cane swung down, thumped hard on the ground. 'Acceptable? Who the fuck says any level is acceptable? What sort of mind thinks that?

Something awaits me. I do not mean this mad Emperor. Something else. Answer me this. How does one measure time?' 'By the course of the sun, the phases of the moon, the wheel of the stars. And, of course, in cities such as this one, the sounding of a bell at fixed intervals – a wholly absurd conceit and, indeed, one that is spiritually debilitating.

It relied on measures of geometrical objects: lengths of lines, areas of squares, volumes of cubes. All of these they called magnitudes. They thought of them as distinct from numbers and superior to them. This, I believe, is why Archimedes held pi at arm's length. He didn't know what to make of it. It was a strange, transcendent creature, more exotic than any number.

Each year surveyors had to redraw the boundaries of farmers' fields after the summer flooding of the Nile washed the borderlines away. That activity later gave its name to the study of shape in general: geometry, from the Greek g?, "earth," and metr?s, "measurer.

The amount of time we can successfully predict the state of a chaotic system depends on three things: how much error we're willing to tolerate in the forecast; how precisely we can measure the initial state of the system; and a time scale that's beyond our control, called the Lyapunov time, which depends on the inherent dynamics of the system itself.

In a chaotic system, the required precision in the initial measurement grows exponentially, not linearly.

Circles are the simplest curves in geometry. Yet, surprisingly, measuring them—quantifying their properties with numbers—transcends geometry.

Along with numbers, shapes mattered too. In ancient Egypt, the measurement of lines and angles was of paramount importance. Each year surveyors had to redraw the boundaries of farmers' fields after the summer flooding of the Nile washed the borderlines away. That activity later gave its name to the study of shape in general: geometry, from the Greek ge, "earth," and metres, "measurer.

I want to stress that—only sixty digits. That's the most we would ever need to express one distance in terms of another.

Thus the hexagon argument demonstrates ? > 3.

If whole numbers and their ratios couldn't even measure something as basic as the diagonal of a perfect square, then all was not number. This deflating letdown may explain why later Greek mathematicians always elevated geometry over arithmetic. Numbers couldn't be trusted anymore. They were inadequate as a foundation for mathematics.

Why is the third hand on a watch called a second hand?

believe it or not, our height varies according to the time of day: we are on average half an inch shorter by the time we go to bed than we were when we got up. We lose most of that height within three hours of rising, as our cartilages settle and compress and decrease our joint spaces.

A culture that values only what has succeeded before, where the first rule of success is that there must be something 'measured' and counted, is not a culture that will sustain alternatives to market-driven 'creativity.

A culture that values only what has succeeded before, where the first rule of success is that there must be something to be 'measured' and counted, is not a culture that will sustain alternatives to market-driven 'creativity.' (NYRB, Vol. LX, No. 17)

Just measured my thing. It has grown one centimetre. I might be needing it soon.

Measured my 'thing'. It was eleven centimetres.

According to the classical Greeks, in the perfect female torso the distance between the nipples of the breasts, the distance from the lower edge of the breast to the navel, and the distance from the navel to the crotch were units of equal length.

Everything man does today to be efficient, to fill the hour? It does not satisfy. It only makes him hungry to do more. Man wants to own his existence. But no one owns time. When you are measuring life, you are not living it.

Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creatures endures. A fear of time running out.

Before you measure the years, you measure the days. And before the days, you measure the moon.

We humans make so much of 'our' time on earth. We measure it, we compare it, we put it in our tombstones.