Quotes About Mathematics

that number is 58 percent

SQUARE ROOT AND PLUS AND MINUS SYMBOLS (1525)

CUBIC EQUATIONS AND COMPLEX NUMBERS (1530-1540)

ELLIPTICAL ORBITS (1605--1609)

LOGARITHMS (1614)

SLIDE RULE (1632)

ANALYTIC GEOMETRY (1637)

MECHANICAL CALCULATOR (1645)

CALCULUS (1684, 1693)

LAW OF UNIVERSAL GRAVITATION (1686)

Nor is mathematics about a Platonic reality of eternal truths. It is a creation of the human body and senses, growing out of the activities of moving along a path and of collecting, constructing, and measuring objects.

If p or q is true, and p is false, then q is true." They just wouldn't be part of the word's meaning.

This cognitive illusion was first noted in 1968 by the mathematician William Feller in his classic textbook on probability: "To the untrained eye, randomness appears as regularity or tendency to cluster."33 Here are a few examples of the cluster illusion. The

Horses have an even number of legs. Behind they have two legs, and in front they have fore-legs. This makes six legs, which is certainly an odd number of legs for a horse. But the only number that is both even and odd is infinity. Therefore, horses have an infinite number of legs.

Quadratic reciprocity is the song of love in the land of prime numbers.

7 x 7 + love = An amount Infinitely above: 7 x 7 - love.

I love mathematics...principally because it is beautiful; because man has breathed his spirit of play into it, and because it has given him his greatest game the encompassing of the infinite.

Math, it's a puzzle to me. I love figuring out puzzles.

I think we need more math majors who don't become mathematicians. More math major doctors, more math major high school teachers, more math major CEOs, more math major senators. But we won't get there unless we dump the stereotype that math is only worthwhile for kid geniuses.

A basic rule of mathematical life: if the universe hands you a hard problem, try to solve an easier one instead, and hope the simple version is close enough to the original problem that the universe doesn't object.

Knowing mathematics is like wearing a pair of X-ray specs that reveal hidden structures underneath the messy and chaotic surface of the world.

Working an integral or performing a linear regression is something a computer can do quite effectively. Understanding whether the result makes sense—or deciding whether the method is the right one to use in the first place—requires a guiding human hand. When we teach mathematics we are supposed to be explaining how to be that guide. A math course that fails to do so is essentially training the student to be a very slow, buggy version of Microsoft Excel.

A mathematician is always asking, "What assumptions are you making? And are they justified?

Dividing one number by another is mere computation ; knowing what to divide by what is mathematics.