Quotes About Mathematics

Mr Baley, said Quemot, you can't treat human emotions as though they were built about a positronic brain. I'm not saying you can. Robotics is a deductive science and sociology an inductive one. But mathematics can be made to apply in either case.

A mathematician, however, who could back his prophecy with mathematical formulas and terminology, might be understood by no one and yet believed by everyone.

The reaction of one man could be forecast by no known mathematics; the reaction of a billion is something else again. Hari

Now tell me what happened—in words. I want your translation of the mathematics.

Not all persons would be equally believed, Demerzel. A mathematician, however, who could back his prophecy with mathematical formulas and terminology, might be understood by no one and yet believed by everyone.

how much is 2+2? Suppose Joseph says: 2+2 = purple, while Maxwell says: 2+2 = 17. Both are wrong but isn't it fair to say that Joseph is wronger than Maxwell? Suppose you said: 2+2=an integer. You'd be right, wouldn't you? Or suppose you said: 2+2=an even integer. You'd be rather righter. Or suppose you said:2+2=3.999. Wouldn't you be nearly right?

Los matemáticos manejan grandes cantidades, pero nunca suyas…

Gaal Dornick, utilizando conceptos no matemáticos, ha definido la psicohistoria como la rama de las matemáticas que trata sobre las reacciones de conglomeraciones humanas ante determinados estímulos sociales y económicos

La psicohistoria no trataba del hombre, sino de las masas de hombres. Era la ciencia de las muchedumbres, de miles de millones de personas. Podía prever las reacciones a diferentes estímulos con la misma exactitud que una ciencia menor predecía el rebote de una bola de billar. La reacción de un hombre se podía vaticinar por medio de las matemáticas conocidas, pero la de mil millones era algo distinto

And after that, there was only the ship, large and glistening; the cool production of 12,000 years of Imperial progress; and himself, with his doctorate in mathematics freshly obtained and an invitation from the great Hari Seldon to come to Trantor and join the vast and somewhat mysterious Seldon Project. What

It is enough for a Psychohistorian, as such, to know his Biostatistics and his Neurochemical Electromathematics. Some know nothing else and are fit only to be statistical technicians. But a Speaker must be able to discuss the Plan without mathematics.

Modern theoretical mathematicians frown at this and make haughty remarks such as But you are making the unwarranted assumption that the line is the same length when it is straight as when it was curved. I imagine the honest workman organizing the construction of the local temple, face with such an objection, would have solved matters by throwing the objector into the River Nile.

The reaction of one man could be forecast by no known mathematics; the reaction of a billion is something else again.

Neurochemical Electromathematics.

PSYCHOHISTORY … Gaal Dornick, using non-mathematical concepts, has defined psychohistory to be that branch of mathematics which deals with the reactions of human conglomerates to fixed social and economic stimuli … … Implicit in all these definitions is the assumption that the human conglomerate being dealt with is sufficiently large for valid statistical treatment.

Hackett's Equation.

Las palabras son un sustituto bastante confuso de las ecuaciones matemáticas.

Through the development of the mathematics necessary to understand the facts of neural physiology and the electrochemistry of the nervous system, which themselves had to be, had to be, traced down to nuclear forces, it first became possible to truly develop psychology.

For instance, in a book entitled Mathematics and the Imagination (published in 1940) the authors, Edward Kasner and James Newman, introduced a number called the googol, which is good and large and which was promptly taken up by writers of books and articles on popular mathematics. Personally, I think it is an awful name, but the young child of one of the authors invented it, and what could a proud father do? Thus, we are afflicted forever with that baby-talk number.

I tell you. I want to go back to Helicon and take up a study of the mathematics of turbulence, which was my Ph.D. problem, and forget I ever saw—or thought I saw—that turbulence gave an insight into human society.

Ebling Mis said unhurriedly, 'You know what I'm doing these days?' 'I have your reports here,' replied the mayor, with satisfaction, 'together with authorized summaries of them. As I understand it, your investigations into the mathematics of psycho-history have been intended to duplicate Hari Seldon's work and, eventually, trace the projected course of future history, for the use of the Foundation.

The concept of zero is attributed to the Hindus. The Hindus were also the first to use zero in the way it is used today.

To those who ask what the infinitely small quantity in mathematics is, we answer that it is actually zero. Hence there are not so many mysteries hidden in this concept as they are usually believed to be.

I have a particular affection for zero because it was some of my countrymen who first gave it the status of a number.