Quotes About Mathematics

The full beauty of the subject of generating functions emerges only from tuning in on both channels: the discrete and the continuous.

I knew my purpose well and clear: to show how Nature behaves without cluttering its beauty with abtruse mathematics.

Mathematics and art are quite different. We could not publish so many papers that used, repeatedly, the same idea and still command the respect of our colleagues.

Mathematics possesses not only truth but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere like that of a sculpture.

Mathematics is a field which has often been compared with chess, but differs from the latter in that it is only one's best moments that count and not one's worst.

I am ashamed to tell you to how many figures I carried these calculations [of Pi], having no other business at the time

There is no perfect mathematical formula for pricing a business.

The idea of 10 dimensions might sound exciting, but they would cause real problems if you forget where you parked your car.

Mathematics is human reason itself in a form everyone can recognise. Why should poetry, reason and religion not be higher forms of Mathematics? All that is needed is a grammar of their common language.

Algebra, like laudanum, deadens pain, Fritz wrote.

only elevenpence in the shilling.

As early as the 1830s Charles Babbage had managed to construct a "Difference Engine" which could perform simple sums, but he soon became preoccupied with the far more complicated "Analytical Engine" which could add, subtract, multiply and divide as well as solve both algebraic and numerical equations; it had also been able to print out the results of its calculations onto stereotype plates. This was the engine which Gissing had come to see.

More important than any one new application is the new 'materials' concept itself. It marks a shift from concern with substances to concern with structures, a shift from artisan to scientist as man's artificer, a shift from chemistry to physics as the basic discipline, and a shift, above all, from the concrete experience of the workshop to abstract mathematics, a shift from starting with what nature provides to what man wants to accomplish. -The Age of Discontinuity, 1969

Primes are the atoms of the number system: every whole number is a product of primes.

Computable Numbers' into practice.21 This was

I made an appointment to see him and then ordered another beer. While I was drinking it I did some doodling on a piece of paper, the algebraic kind that you hope will help you think more clearly. When I finished doing that, I was more confused than ever. Algebra was never my strong subject.

But think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one: you can never see any concrete proof that it exists, but if you include it in your equations, you can calculate all manner of things that couldn't be imagined without it.

think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one: you can never see any concrete proof that it exists, but if you include it in your equations, you can calculate all manner of things that couldn't be imagined without it.

You know the theorem of Pythagoras?" "The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides." "That's exactly it. And is that true for every example you've tried?" "Yes.

think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one: you can never see any concrete proof that it exists, but if you include it in your equations, you can calculate all manner

Ma tu pensa ad Adamo ed Eva come una specie di numero immaginario, come la radice quadrata di meno uno; non potrai mai vedere nessuna prova concreta della sua esistenza, ma se la includi nelle tue equazioni potrai calcolare tutta una serie di cose che in sua assenza non si potrebbero neppure concepire.

There are exactly as many R.L.-points in [0,1] as there are in [0,2].

you can prove that there are exactly as many real numbers between 0 and 1 as between 0 and any other finite number you can think of.

It is true that doing original math is 'lonely.' But it is also true that professional mathematicians compose a community.