"mathematics"タグの名言

A mathematician believes that describing the speed of Mercury with equations amounts to science.

College is the grinding machine of the Mathematical Establishment, a conveyor belt that takes individuals from one cookie cutter to another so that the product comes within tight control limits out of the assembly line.

I am no friend of probability theory, I have hated it from the first moment when our dear friend Max Born gave it birth. For it could be seen how easy and simple it made everything, in principle, everything ironed and the true problems concealed. Everybody must jump on the bandwagon [Ausweg]. And actually not a year passed before it became an official credo, and it still is.

Calabi-Yau manifolds, like math itself, are developing stories on a road that undoubtedly holds many twists and turns. It means there's always more to be learned, always more to be done. And for those of us who worry about keeping employed, keeping engaged, and keeping amused, it means there should be plenty of challenges, as well as fun, in the years ahead.

The cost of scientific advance is the humbling recognition that reality was not constructed to be easily grasped by the human mind. This is the cardinal tenet of scientific understanding: Our species and its ways of thinking are a product of evolution, not the purpose of evolution.

Away from the top of the throat [of variations of Calabi-Yau conifolds with warped throats], the two geometries look almost identical, and people used to think they could be used interchangeably. Shiu and I showed that the details do matter.

The physicists defer only to mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God.

The physicists defer only to the mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God.

It might be objected that men are not trees; that if a man realizes something ought to be done, he can go and do it. This is true within certain limits. There can be social conditions favourable to mathematical studies; if a country urgently needs mathematicians, and if everyone knows this, mathematics may well flourish. But this still does not answer the question of how · it comes to flourish. An external motive, good or bad, is not enough. Greed for money, desire for fame, love of humanity are equally incapable of making a man a composer of great music. It has been said that most young men would like to be able to sit down at the piano and improvise sonatas before admiring crowds. But few do it; to desire the end does not provide the means; to make music you must be interested in music, as well as (or instead of) in being admired. And to make mathematics you must be interested in mathematics. The fascination of pattern and the logical classification of pattern must have taken hold of you. It need not be the only emotion in your mind; you may pursue other aims, respond to other duties; but if it is not there, you will contribute nothing to mathematics.

You can't write a sonnet if you have to look up the spelling of each word as you go.

Translate these numbers, which are written in base seven, to base five.” Translating from one base to another is an utterly useless thing. If you can do it, maybe it’s entertaining; if you can’t do it, forget it. There’s no point to it.

The underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a larger part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known.

The Munduruku have many things, but not enough numbers to count them. Cantor has provided us with as many numbers as we like, but there are no longer enough things to count.

Please, this isn't a Poe mystery; it hardly requires a C. Auguste Dupin level of detection. It took me a few seconds. Most people go around thinking that life is magical and mysterious, filled with all kinds of unknowns. Bullshit. Once you decide the universe is knowable, all kinds of answers become available to you.

We could, of course, use any notation we want; do not laugh at notations; invent them, they are powerful. In fact,mathematics is, to a large extent, invention of better notations.

Why don't we want our children to learn to do mathematics? Is it that we don't trust them, that we think it's too hard? We seem to feel that they are capable of making arguments and coming to their own conclusions about Napoleon. Why not about triangles?

[Math] curriculum is obsessed with jargon and nomenclature seemingly for no other purpose than to provide teachers with something to test the students on.

Perhaps the most surprising and powerful aspect of place-value arithmetic is how it reduces any calculation to a set of purely abstract symbolic manipulations. In principle, I suppose, one could even be trained to perform such symbol-jiggling procedures without any comprehension whatever of the underlying meaning. We could even (if we can possible imagine being so cruel) force young children to memorize tables of symbols and meaningless step-by-step procedures, and then reward or punish them for their skill (or lack thereof) in this dreary and soulless activity. This would help protect our future office workers from accidentally gaining a personal relationship to arithmetic as a craft or enjoying the perspective that outlook would provide. We could turn the entire enterprise into a rote mechanical process and then reward those who show the most willingness to be made into reliable and obedient tools. I wonder if you can imagine such a nightmarish, dystopian world? Let's try not to think about it.

Nejde o to, že učíme matematiku, protože by matematika měla být učena, ale protože je dítě díky matematice zvláštním způsobem rozvíjeno ve své duši.

What music is to the heart, mathematics is to the mind.