Quotes About Mathematics

one-way functions are sometimes called Humpty Dumpty functions. Modular arithmetic, sometimes called clock arithmetic in schools, is an area of mathematics that is rich in one-way functions. In modular arithmetic, mathematicians consider a finite group of numbers arranged in a loop

The mathematical life of a mathematician is short. Work rarely improves after the age of twenty-five or thirty. If little has been accomplished by then, little will ever be accomplished.

Mersenne met with the other mathematicians, but he was saddened by their reluctance to talk to him or to each other.

A large amount of identically encrypted material provides a cryptanalyst with a correspondingly larger chance of identifying the key.

The three Britons had to sit back and watch as their discoveries were rediscovered by Diffie, Hellman, Merkle, Rivest, Shamir and Adleman over the next three years.

it can be mathematically proved that it is impossible for a cryptanalyst to crack a message encrypted with a onetime pad cipher. In other words, the onetime pad cipher is not merely believed to be unbreakable, just as the Vigenère cipher was in the nineteenth century, it really is absolutely secure

the Third World War would be the mathematicians' war, because mathematicians will have control over the next great weapon of war—information. Mathematicians have been responsible for developing the codes that are currently used to protect military information.

Number theorists consider prime numbers to be the most important numbers of all because they are the atoms of mathematics. Prime numbers are the numerical building blocks because all other numbers can be created by multiplying combinations of the prime numbers.

Pythagoras, the teacher, paid his student three oboli for each lesson he attended

Polský úspÄ›ch v prolomení Enigmy byl dán tÃ…â"¢emi faktory: strachem, matematikou a Å¡pionáží.

Each member of the school was forced to swear an oath never to reveal to the outside world any of their mathematical discoveries.

The problem looks so straightforward because it is based on the one piece of mathematics that everyone can remember – Pythagoras' theorem: In a right-angled triangle the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.

Even after Pythagoras's death a member of the Brotherhood was drowned for breaking his oath—he publicly announced the discovery of a new regular solid, the dodecahedron, constructed from twelve regular pentagons.

It has been said that the First World War was the chemists' war, because mustard gas and chlorine were employed for the first time, and that the Second World War was the physicists' war, because the atom bomb was detonated. Similarly, it has been argued that the Third World War would be the mathematicians' war, because mathematicians will have control over the next great weapon of war—information.

although there are plenty of numbers whose divisors add up to one less than the number itself, that is to say only slightly defective, there appear to be no numbers that are slightly excessive.

Euclid discovered that perfect numbers are always the multiple of two numbers, one of which is a power of 2 and the other being the next power of 2 minus 1.

The construction of mathematical logic had become the arbiter of truth. This was the Pythagoreans' greatest contribution to civilisation - a way of achieving truth which is beyond the fallibility of human judgement.

meantime, here is a list of degrees for five of the nerdiest writers: J. STEWART BURNS BS Mathematics, Harvard University MS Mathematics, UC Berkeley DAVID S. COHEN BS Physics, Harvard University MS Computer Science, UC Berkeley AL JEAN BS Mathematics, Harvard University KEN KEELER BS Applied Mathematics, Harvard University PhD Applied Mathematics, Harvard University JEFF WESTBROOK BS Physics, Harvard University PhD Computer Science, Princeton University

prove that xn + yn = zn has no whole number solutions for n greater than 2.

young orphaned Bertrand initially faltered—until the moment when, at age eleven, his older brother introduced him to the logical purity of Euclidean geometry. Suddenly mathematics, as well as a near-fanatical interest in peace, became the young man's watchwords. It was then that he began his "relentless search for knowledge," as he later described it, which seems to characterize all soi-disant polymaths, of which he was to be a prime exemplar.

Albert Einstein, who had been exiled from Germany for his guilty devotion to mathematics, world peace, and the violin, was now exiled from America for the same crimes.

And please return it. You may think this a strange request, but I find that although my friends are poor arithmeticians, they are nearly all of them good bookkeepers.

In adolescence, I hated life and was continually on the verge of suicide, from which, however, I was restrained by the desire to know more mathematics.

As you will find in multivariable calculus, there is often a number of solutions for any given problem.