Mathematics Quotes - Page 27

• It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done. Statesmen despise publicists, painters despise art-critics, and physiologists, physicists, or mathematicians have usually similar feelings: there is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.

  G. H. Hardy

  Appreciation, Art, Writing

  G. H. Hardy (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.61, Cambridge University Press

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• No mathematician should ever allow himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game

  G. H. Hardy

  Art, Men, Games

  G. H. Hardy (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.70, Cambridge University Press

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• The analysis of variance is not a mathematical theorem, but rather a convenient method of arranging the arithmetic.

  Ronald Fisher

  Science, Pythagorean Theorem, Analysis

  "Statistics in agricultural research". Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 1934.

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• Mathematics is so much easier than words mathematics makes things clear that words merely muddle and confuse and mess up.

  John Maynard Smith

  Easier, Clear, Mess

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• Everyone now agrees that a physics lacking all connection with mathematics ... would only be an historical amusement, fitter for entertaining the idle than for occupying the mind of a philosopher.

  Franz Karl Achard

  Historical, Mind, Connections

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• Pi is not merely the ubiquitous factor in high school geometry problems; it is stitched across the whole tapestry of mathematics, not just geometry's little corner of it. Pi occupies a key place in trigonometry too. It is intimately related to e, and to imaginary numbers. Pi even shows up in the mathematics of probability

  Robert Kanigel

  School, Keys, Numbers

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• The discovery in 1846 of the planet Neptune was a dramatic and spectacular achievement of mathematical astronomy. The very existence of this new member of the solar system, and its exact location, were demonstrated with pencil and paper; there was left to observers only the routine task of pointing their telescopes at the spot the mathematicians had marked.

  James R Newman

  Math, Discovery, Achievement

  James R. Newman (2000). “The World of Mathematics”, p.820, Рипол Классик

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• Mathematics are the result of mysterious powers which no one understands, and which the unconscious recognition of beauty must play an important part. Out of an infinity of designs a mathematician chooses one pattern for beauty's sake and pulls it down to earth.

  Marston Morse

  Play, Design, Important

  Marston Morse, Raoul Bott (1981). “Selected papers”, Springer Verlag

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• The numbers are a catalyst that can help turn raving madmen into polite humans.

  Philip J. Davis

  Math, Numbers, Helping

  Philip J. Davis, William G. Chinn (1985). “3.1416 and all that”, Birkhauser

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• Blindness to the aesthetic element in mathematics is widespread and can account for a feeling that mathematics is dry as dust, as exciting as a telephone book... Contrariwise, appreciation of this element makes the subject live in a wonderful manner and burn as no other creation of the human mind seems to do.

  Philip J. Davis

  Appreciation, Book, Dust

  Philip J. Davis, Reuben Hersh, Elena Anne Marchisotto (1995). “The Mathematical Experience: Study Edition”, p.185, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Music is a science which should have definite rules; these rules should be drawn from an evident principle; and this principle cannot really be known to us without the aid of mathematics.

  Jean-Philippe Rameau

  Should Have, Principles, Aids

  Jean-Philippe Rameau (1971). “Traite de l'harmonie reduites a ses principes naturels”, p.35, Courier Corporation

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• There cannot be a language more universal and more simple, more free from errors and obscurities...more worthy to express the invariable relations of all natural things [than mathematics]. [It interprets] all phenomena by the same language, as if to attest the unity and simplicity of the plan of the universe, and to make still more evident that unchangeable order which presides over all natural causes

  Joseph Fourier

  Simple, Errors, Order

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• The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Music, Beauty, Art

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• The measure of our intellectual capacity is the capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better and better problems.

  C. West Churchman

  Math, Intellectual, Answers

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• Perfect clarity would profit the intellect but damage the will.

  Blaise Pascal

  Math, Perfect, Damage

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• Statistics: the mathematical theory of ignorance.

  Morris Kline

  Ignorance, Math, Statistics

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• Just as music comes alive in the performance of it, the same is true of mathematics. The symbols on the page have no more to do with mathematics than the notes on a page of music. They simply represent the experience.

  Keith Devlin

  Math, Alive, Pages

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• Mathematics is the gate and key to science.

  Roger Bacon

  Math, Keys, Gates

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• How happy the lot of the mathematician. He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve.

  W. H. Auden

  Happiness, Math, Science

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• A mathematician's reputation rests on the number of bad proofs he has given.

  Abram Samoilovitch Besicovitch

  Math, Numbers, Reputation

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• Mathematics - this may surprise or shock some - is never deductive in creation.

  Paul Halmos

  Education, Knowledge, Math

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• Mathematicians create by acts of insights and intuition. Logic then sanctions the conquests of intuition.

  Morris Kline

  Education, Knowledge, Math

  Morris Kline (1964). “Mathematics in Western Culture”, p.408, Oxford University Press

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• Mathematics is a body of knowledge, but it contains no truths.

  Morris Kline

  Knowledge, Math, Body

  Morris Kline (1964). “Mathematics in Western Culture”, p.9, Oxford University Press

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• Proof is an idol before which the mathematician tortures himself.

  Arthur Eddington

  Education, Knowledge, Math

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• The only way to learn mathematics is to do mathematics. That tenet is the foundation of the do-it-yourself, Socratic, or Texas method.

  Paul Halmos

  Education, Knowledge, Math

  P.R. Halmos, Paul Richard Halmos (1982). “A Hilbert Space Problem Book”, p.7, Springer Science & Business Media

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