Mathematical Problems Quotes - Page 2

• By the time the average person finishes college, he or she will have taken over 2,600 tests, quizzes, and exams. The right answer approach becomes deeply ingrained in our thinking. This may be fine for some mathematical problems where there is in fact only one right answer. The difficulty is that most of life isn’t this way. Life is ambiguous; there are many right answers- all depending on what you’re looking for. But if you think there is only one right answer, then you’ll stop looking as soon as you find one.

  Roger von Oech

  Life, Taken, College

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• Music is a secret and unconscious mathematical problem of the soul.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Soul, Secret, Problem

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• I combat the errors of ages; I meet the violence of mobs; I cope with illegal proceedings from executive authority; I cut the gordian knot of powers, and I solve mathematical problems of universities, with truth-diamond truth; and God is my 'right hand man'.

  Joseph Smith, Jr.

  Cutting, Men, Errors

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• An old French mathematician said: "A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street." This clearness and ease of comprehension, here insisted on for a mathematical theory, I should still more demand for a mathematical problem if it is to be perfect; for what is clear and easily comprehended attracts, the complicated repels us.

  David Hilbert

  Men, Perfect, Ease

  "Mathematical Problems". Lecture delivered before the International Congress of Mathematicians at Paris, translated by Maby Winton Newson, mathcs.clarku.edu. 1900.

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• As a single atom man is an enigma: as a whole he is a mathematical problem. As an individual he is a free agent, as a species the offspring of necessity.

  William Winwood Reade

  Men, Atoms, Agents

  William Winwood Reade (1874). “The Martyrdom of Man”, p.186

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• Before a kid learns how to use a computer that can solve mathematical problems, he or she should know how to do arithmetic without a computer.

  Andy Rooney

  Kids, Use, Computer

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• In fact, I barely missed being number one in France in both schools. In particular I did very well in mathematical problems.

  Benoit Mandelbrot

  School, Numbers, France

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Cell and tissue, shell and bone, leaf and flower, are so many portions of matter, and it is in obedience to the laws of physics that their particles have been moved, moulded and conformed. They are no exceptions to the rule that God always geometrizes. Their problems of form are in the first instance mathematical problems, their problems of growth are essentially physical problems, and the morphologist is, ipso facto, a student of physical science.

  D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

  Flower, Math, Law

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• If you attack a mathematical problem directly, very often you come to a dead end, nothing you do seems to work and you feel that if only you could peer round the corner there might be an easy solution. There is nothing like having somebody else beside you, because he can usually peer round the corner.

  Michael Atiyah

  Peers, Might, Problem

  Michael Atiyah (1988). “Collected Works: Michael Atiyah Collected Works: Volume 1: Early Papers; General Papers”, p.214, Oxford University Press

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• The definition of a good mathematical problem is the mathematics it generates rather than the problem itself.

  Andrew Wiles

  Science, Sensual, Definitions

  "Andrew Wiles on Solving Fermat". The NOVA Interview, www.pbs.org. November 1, 2000.

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