Quotes About Mathematics

In order to produce it [an infinite series] we would need an infinitely long blackboard, an infinite supply of chalk, and an infinite length of time. We may be censured as too cruel for trying to crush so high a flight of the spirit by such a homely objection; but this is no answer.

Nothing in life now ever seems to end. Chemists tell you matter is never completely destroyed, and mathematicians tell you that if you halve each pace in crossing a room, you will never reach the opposite wall, so what an optimist I would be if I thought that this story ended here.

quatre cent vingt et un

all we ever needed to do to rediscover that knowledge was to measure the height and base perimeter of the Great Pyramid and multiply by 43,200! How likely is this to be an 'accident'?

Their math lacks integers!" "As far as we can tell," Jennifer added. "They don't use whole numbers at all. Only 'smears,' they call them.

Scientists require apparatus, but mathists splendidly require only writing tools and erasers. Better, philosophers do not even need erasers

Riemann conjecture

who could visualize four-dimensional surfaces in a non-Euclidean geometry

In World War II, a British mathematician named Alan Turing led the effort to crack the Nazis' communication code. He mastered the complex German enciphering machine, helping to save the world, and his work laid the basis for modern computer science. Does it matter that Turing was gay?

Soviet mathematics was particularly good in the second half of the 20th century, basically because of the arms race, because the Soviet Union realized... World War II created the conditions for the Soviet Union to become a superpower.

Many go through life afraid of numbers and upset by numbers. They would rather amble along through life miscounting, miscalculating and, in general, mismanaging their worldly affairs than make friends with numbers.

I had done quite a bit of research about math education when I spoke before Congress in 2000 about the importance of women in mathematics. The session of Congress was all about raising more scholarships for girls in college. I told them I felt that it's too late by college.

The ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously.

I still remember the realization in college at Flinders University in Australia that mathematics was not just an abstract game of symbols but could be used as a tool to analyze and understand the modern world.

One of the most important tools in critical thinking about numbers is to grant yourself permission to generate wrong answers to mathematical problems you encounter. Deliberately wrong answers!

Computers are very powerful tools, but in the simulated world of the computer, everything has to be calculated.

When I was little, I carried a book of times tables around everywhere and always tried to get the best score. I like the fact that you don't need any tools, only your head. I also enjoy rules and, with maths, you are either right or wrong.

There's nothing really connecting the behavior of the Nile, metallurgy, and the behavior of prices except that I had the mathematical tools to explain them.

Pick up a sunflower and count the florets running into its centre, or count the spiral scales of a pine cone or a pineapple, running from its bottom up its sides to the top, and you will find an extraordinary truth: recurring numbers, ratios and proportions.

When I first began studying prices, it wasn't a topic that mathematicians were working on. Purely by accident, I saw a set of data on price changes presented in a lecture and realized they behaved similarly to the geometric models I was already studying.

Newton blew away any dusty talk of natures and purposes, revealing what lay underneath: a crisp, rigorous mathematical formalism with which teachers continue to torment students to this very day.

As impressive as matrix mechanics was, it suffered from a severe marketing flaw. The mathematical formalism was highly abstract and difficult to understand. Einstein's reaction to the theory was typical: A veritable sorcerer's calculation. This is sufficiently ingenious and protected by its great complexity to be immune to any proof of its falsity. This from the guy who had proposed describing space-time in terms of non-Euclidian geometry.

Last time I asked: 'What does mathematics mean to you?', and some people answered: "The manipulation of numbers, the manipulation of structures.' And if I had asked what music means to you, would you have answered: 'The manipulation of notes?

Children begin their lives as eager and competent learners. They have to learn to have trouble with learning in general and mathematics in particular.