Mathematical Quotes - Page 27

• Thus we can get the correct answer for the probability of partial reflection by imagining (falsely) that all reflection comes from only the front and back surfaces. In this intuitively easy analysis, the 'front surface' and 'back surface' arrows are mathematical constructions that give us the right answer, whereas .... a more accurate representation of what is really going on: partial reflection is the scattering of light by electrons inside the glass.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Reflection, Arrows, Glasses

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• Mathematics may be defined as the economy of counting. There is no problem in the whole of mathematics which cannot be solved by direct counting.

  Ernst Mach

  Math, May, Problem

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• Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head.

  Carl Sandburg

  Math, Numbers, Pigeons

  Carl Sandburg, Frances Schoonmaker Bolin (1995). “Carl Sandburg”, p.17, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.

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• I imagine that whenever the mind perceives a mathematical idea, it makes contact with Plato's world of mathematical concepts... When mathematicians communicate, this is made possible by each one having a direct route to truth, the consciousness of each being in a position to perceive mathematical truths directly, through the process of 'seeing'.

  Roger Penrose

  Plato, Ideas, Mind

  Roger Penrose (1999). “The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics”, p.554, OUP Oxford

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• In the broad light of day mathematicians check their equations and their proofs, leaving no stone unturned in their search for rigour. But, at night, under the full moon, they dream, they float among the stars and wonder at the miracle of the heavens. They are inspired. Without dreams there is no art, no mathematics, no life.

  Michael Atiyah

  Inspirational, Life, Dream

  Michael Atiyah (2014). “Michael Atiyah Collected Works: 2002-2013”, p.267, Oxford University Press, USA

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• There are two versions of math in the lives of many Americans: the strange and boring subject that they encountered in classrooms and an interesting set of ideas that is the math of the world, and is curiously different and surprisingly engaging. Our task is to introduce this second version to today's students, get them excited about math, and prepare them for the future.

  Jo Boaler

  Education, Teacher, Math

  Jo Boaler (2015). “What's Math Got to Do with It?: How Teachers and Parents Can Transform Mathematics Learning and Inspire Success”, p.5, Penguin

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• The explorer is the person who is lost.

  Tim Cahill

  Lost, Persons, Explorers

  Tim Cahill (1987). “Jaguars ripped my flesh: adventure is a risky business”, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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• 

  To make a great dream come true, the first requirement is a great capacity to dream; the second is persistence.

  Cesar Chavez

  Dream, Persistence, Requirements

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• We've taught you that the earth is round, That red and white make pink, And something else that matters more - We've taught you how to think.

  Dr. Seuss

  Thinking, White, Earth

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• It is the peculiar beauty of this method, gentlemen, and one which endears it to the really scientific mind, that under no circumstance can it be of the smallest possible utility.

  Henry John Stephen Smith

  Beauty, Math, Science

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• The mathematician is fascinated with the marvelous beauty of the forms he constructs, and in their beauty he finds everlasting truth.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Beauty, Truth, Math

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• What I love about cooking is that after a hard day, there is something comforting about the fact that if you melt butter and add flour and then hot stock, it will get thick! It's a sure thing! It's a sure thing in a world where nothing is sure; it has a mathematical certainty in a world where those of us who long for some kind of certainty are forced to settle for crossword puzzles.

  Nora Ephron

  Food, Long, Cooking

  FaceBook post by Nora Ephron from Sep 06, 2016

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• A child is born on that day, and at that hour when the celestial rays are in mathematical harmony with his individual Karma. His horoscope is a challenging portrait, revealing his unalterable past and its probable future result. But the natal chart can be rightly interpreted only by men of intuitive wisdom - These are few.

  Sri Yukteswar Giri

  Karma, Children, Men

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• To throw in a fair game at Hazards only three-spots, when something great is at stake, or some business is the hazard, is a natural occurrence and deserves to be so deemed; and even when they come up the same way for a second time if the throw be repeated. If the third and fourth plays are the same, surely there is occasion for suspicion on the part of a prudent man.

  Gerolamo Cardano

  Business, Math, Men

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• Bistromathics itself is simply a revolutionary new way of understanding the behavior of numbers. Just as Einstein observed that space was not an absolute but depended on the observer's movement in space, and that time was not an absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in time, so it is now realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observer's movement in restaurants.

  Douglas Adams

  Time, Math, Science

  Douglas Adams (2010). “The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”, p.427, Del Rey

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• We do not worry about being respected in towns through which we pass. But if we are going to remain in one for a certain time, we do worry. How long does this time have to be?

  Blaise Pascal

  Time, Math, Long

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• Leibniz never married; he had considered it at the age of fifty; but the person he had in mind asked for time to reflect. This gave Leibniz time to reflect, too, and so he never married.

  Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

  Time, Math, Mind

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• Every mathematician worthy of the name has experienced . . . the state of lucid exaltation in which one thought succeeds another as if miraculously . . . this feeling may last for hours at a time, even for days. Once you have experienced it, you are eager to repeat it but unable to do it at will, unless perhaps by dogged work. . . .

  Andre Weil

  Time, Work, Math

  Andre Weil (2012). “The Apprenticeship of a Mathematician”, p.91, Birkhäuser

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• I recall once saying that when I had given the same lecture several times I couldn't help feeling that they really ought to know it by now.

  John Edensor Littlewood

  Math, Feelings, Lectures

  John Edensor Littlewood, Béla Bollobás (1986). “Littlewood's Miscellany”, p.135, Cambridge University Press

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• Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling do not understand the process of reasoning, because they want to comprehend at a glance and are not used to seeking for first principles. Those, on the other hand, who are accustomed to reason from first principles do not understand matters of feeling at all, because they look for first principles and are unable to comprehend at a glance.

  Blaise Pascal

  Math, Hands, Judging

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• In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Math, Ideas, Issues

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.72, Simon and Schuster

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• Nothing has done more to render modern economic theory a sterile and irrelevant exercise in autoeroticism than its practitioners’ obsession with mathematical, general-equilibrium models.

  Robert Higgs

  Exercise, Done, Obsession

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• In studying mathematics or simply using a mathematical principle, if we get the wrong answer in sort of algebraic equation, we do not suddenly feel that there is an anti-mathematical principle that is luring us into the wrong answers.

  Eric Butterworth

  Math, Principles, Wrong Answers

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• The greatest reward lies in making the discovery; recognition can add little or nothing to that.

  Franz Ernst Neumann

  Lying, Math, Discovery

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• Prayers for the condemned man will be offered on an adding machine. Numbers constitute the only universal language.

  Nathanael West

  Prayer, Math, Men

  1933 Miss Lonely hearts.

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