Quotes About Mathematics

Not only in probability theory, but in all mathematics, it is the careless use of infinite sets, and of infinite and infinitesimal quantities, that generates most paradoxes.

Benoit Mandelbrot can be considered the Euclid of fractal geometry. He has collected the observations of mathematicians concerned with monsters, or objects not definable by euclidean geometry. By combining the work of these mathematicians with his own insight, he has created a geometry of nature that thrives on asymmetry and roughness. Mandelbrot has said that mountains are not cones, and clouds are not spheres.

Posterity is not kind to mathematicians who make errors.

The geometry! I think I can see it! Each quarter section is homeomorphic to a triangle!

Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater

The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest

Do not worry about your problems in mathematics. I assure you, my problems with mathematics are much greater than yours.

Life has obliged him to remember so much useful knowledge that he has lost not only his history, but his whole original cargo of useless knowledge history, languages, literatures, the higher mathematics, or what you will - are all gone.

We don't know where numbers come from or why they have the properties they do, unless you believe that they are a system invented by humans based on the ways in which we apprehend the world, a creation of our thinking and therefore our neurology.

Mathematicians have, according to Wright, been "unreasonably successful" in finding applications to apparently useless theorems, and often years after the theorems were first discovered.

The Munduruku have many things, but not enough numbers to count them. Cantor has provided us with as many numbers as we like, but there are no longer enough things to count.

While the idea of worshipping numbers may now seem bizarre, it perhaps reflects the scale of wonderment at the discovery of the first fragments of abstract mathematical knowledge. The excitement of learning that there is order in nature, when previously you were not aware that there was any at all, must have felt like a religious awakening.

Rounding to the nearest cent is sufficiently accurate for practical purposes.

I'm always crunching numbers, so my calculator watch is a must.

You can get a certain amount of pleasure as a mathematical spectator, reading and watching some of the most beautiful arguments that have been created in the history of humanity. But that's too passive.

The fun little proofs that you can do with algebra - they are sort of like crowd pleasers in a way. Like, the .9 repeating equaling one. It doesn't take a lot of algebra to prove that, and it's really fun. It kind of wows people. It's like they're watching magic happen right before their eyes.

When I do the dodecahedron with the science audiences, I'll point out that I can only do three of the five forms with bubbles, since bubbles only join at three-way corners. The two I can't do are the ones that represent water and air. That always gets a big laugh from the mathematicians. They see the irony in it.

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

God exists since mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exists since we cannot prove it.

There have been numerous times when my career was supposed to be over because of mathematics, you know, age and numbers,' he says. 'How many times can you go platinum? How many times can you rap about the same subject? How many times can you say, 'Oakland?'

Mathematics was hard, dull work. Geography pleased me more. For dancing I was quite enthusiastic.

Logarithmic plots are a device of the devil.

I can see that, without being excited, mathematics can look pointless and cold.

Had I to do it again, I would have been a math major, probably a double major, and did take a lot of math classes, but I would have taken a lot more.