Quotes About Mathematics

M. Mitchell Waldrop

We also know that evolution crafted all life on the planet with natural selection and that we can capture the way it works with mathematics, distilling its essence into the form of equations.

Coxeter also wrote a long mathematical explanation in his letter, which was beyond Escher's comprehension, as he remarked in a letter to George and Corrie. Baarn, 28 May 1960: 'I had an enthusiastic letter from Coexter about my coloured fish, which I sent him. Three pages of explanation of what I actually did... It's a pity that I understand nothing, absolutely nothing of it...

so meer Poets and meer Musicians, are as sottish as meer Drunkards are, who live in a continuall mist without seeing, or judgeing any thing clearly. A man should be learn'd in severall Sciences, and should have a rea?sonable Philosophicall, and ni some measure a Mathematicall head; to be a compleat and excellent Poet

In his many remarks on mathematics, Wittgenstein is concerned to show the delusiveness of this picture. For when we reflect on it, we forget that we are looking at a projection of our own decisions and their consequences.

If you could fold a piece of paper 51 times, its thickness would exceed the distance from here to the Sun.

If you have a pizza with radius z and thickness a, its volume is pi*z*z*a.

In English, the name of every number shares a letter with each neighbor. One shares an O with two, which shares a T with three, which shares an R with four, which shares an F with five, which shares an I with six—and so on indefinitely.

Common integration is only the memory of differentiation.

It can be of no practical use to know that Pi is irrational, but if we can know, it surely would be intolerable not to know.

The investigation of mathematical truths accustoms the mind to method and correctness in reasoning, and is an employment peculiarly worthy of rational beings.

Starting in the seventeenth century, the general theory of extreme values - maxima and minima - has become one of the systematic integrating principles of science.

There isn't an education system on the planet that teaches dance everyday to children the way we teach them mathematics. Why?

Only dead mathematics can be taught where competition prevails: living mathematics must always be a communal possession.

The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows.

I write emotional algebra.

The Fair Tax Equation: T=I(I(.000001))

The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.

It is always the case, with mathematics, that a little direct experience of thinking over things on your own can provide a much deeper understanding than merely reading about them.

It is a well-known experience that the only truly enjoyable and profitable way of studying mathematics is the method of "filling in details" by one's own efforts.

Spending time with math people is a lot of fun. As a result of the play, I've had semi-drunken dinners with mathematicians all over the country. I recommend the experience.

Experience proves that anyone who has studied geometry is infinitely quicker to grasp difficult subjects than one who has not.

If indeed, as Hilbert asserted, mathematics is a meaningless game played with meaningless marks on paper, the only mathematical experience to which we can refer is the making of marks on paper.

Before beginning [to try to prove Fermat's Last Theorem] I should have to put in three years of intensive study, and I haven't that much time to squander on a probable failure.