Introducer Of The Math Quotes

I carried this problem around in my head basically the whole time. I would wake up with it first thing in the morning, I would be thinking about it all day, and I would be thinking about it when I went to sleep. Without distraction I would have the same thing going round and round in my mind.
(Recalling the degree of focus and determination that eventually yielded the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.) ~ Andrew John Wiles

I'm very committed to its educational institutions, including my alma mater Central Falls High School's drama program, because I know that's what got me my start. I do everything I can to keep it alive since it made me feel like I had something to give to the world. I also support the Segue Institute for Learning, a charter school in Central Falls run by a friend of mine that my niece attends. I'm committed to that because of its proven results. They have the highest math scores of any charter school in Rhode Island. ~ Viola Davis

If we wish to foresee the future of mathematics, our proper course is to study the history and present condition of the science. ~ Henri Poincare

My secret love, Billy Colbert, had to make up the same test.
Afterward, we left the chemistry lab together. 'Well, it was long,' Billy said, 'but it wasn't hard.'
'I thought it was long *and* hard,' I replied.
'Oh, cut it out, Rachel,' Billy remonstrated. 'If there's one thing I can't stand, it's brains who pretend they suffer just as much as the rest of us.'
'I'm not a brain in chemistry,' I protested. 'If I get good grades in science or math, it's because I work. You're the brain in chemistry. I hate that word, brain, anyway. Everyone has a brain, and they're all about the same size, even a moron's. ~ Barbara Cohen

The Prussian Academy of Sciences is a fast-track academic institute that requires a proactive, hands-on-type individual to overthrow the Newtonian conception of the universe. The successful candidate will have an excellent command of mass, energy, space, time and some maths. Bonus paid upon completion of proofs ~ Albert Einstein

probably heard that math is the language of science, or the language of Nature is mathematics. Well, it's true. The more we understand the universe, the more we discover its mathematical connections. Flowers have spirals that line up with a special sequence of numbers (called Fibonacci numbers) that you can understand and generate yourself. Seashells form in perfect mathematical curves (logarithmic spirals) that come from a chemical balance. Star clusters tug on ~ Arthur Benjamin

Mathematics is not arithmetic. Though mathematics may have arisen from the practices of counting and measuring it really deals with logical reasoning in which theorems - general and specific statements - can be deduced from the starting assumptions. It is, perhaps, the purest and most rigorous of intellectual activities, and is often thought of as queen of the sciences. ~ Christopher Zeeman

So, in one slightly technical line, here's the mathematical skinny. There's an equation in string theory that has a contribution of the form (D-10) times (Trouble), where D represents the number of spacetime dimensions and Trouble is a mathematical expression resulting in troublesome physical phenomena, such as the violation of energy conservation mentioned above. As to why the equation takes this precise form, I can't offer any intuitive, nontechnical explanation. But if you do the calculation, that's where the math leads. Now, this simple but key observation is that if the number of spacetime dimensions is ten, not the four we expect, the contribution becomes 0 times Trouble. And since 0 times anything is 0, in a universe with ten spacetime dimensions the trouble gets wiped away. That's how the math plays out. Really. And that's why string theorists argue for a universe with more than four spacetime dimensions. ~ Brian Greene

I have been teaching my own kids math Full-Contact for years. I know from personal experience that 10 minutes of math time with me and my undivided attention is far more productive for my kids than an hour spent doing exercises off on their own. I firmly believe in the idea of '"less time, more connection" as an effective way to teach math. ~ Robin Padron

It baffled me how people could resist math's gorgeousness, but people did, and people do. The fine of its purity drives them away, the purity of the fine, unmixed with the heaviness of unnecessitated being. ~ Rebecca Goldstein

While President Obama shirks his responsibility to advance solutions to our fiscal challenges, he can no longer hide from the merciless math of the balance sheet. Conservatives have made certain of that. ~ Paul Ryan

People were her greatest fear, and in the simple math of her reasoning, there were more here, around them, going slowly insane. ~ Kenneth Calhoun

It's like doing one of those dumb math problems: three people are driving at 20mph in a car carrying two gallons of gas and a horse doing yoga, when a car traveling at 30mph with two clowns drinking cola collides, what time is it in Tokyo? It doesn't make any sense and the only answer I ever come up with is who ~ Jane Harvey-Berrick

After the war, I went to the University of Chicago, where I was pleased to study anthropology, a science that was mostly poetry, that involved almost no math at all. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Here then - the after math of meaning. A liftime finished between the space of two frames. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

I have no problem with being fabulous. My problem comes when you won't allow yourself to be an ordinary woman with a decent apartment and an okay job. When only the mom is allowed to be boring - because her life is so rich with meaning.

When I carefully choreographed the story of how amazing I was, I was acting like one of those helicopter parents - you know, the ones who refuse to admit that their Jackson might suck at math or Stella might not be the world's greatest violinist. 'You are special! You are special!' they cry to their children, hoping this will boost their confidence. But the real message is one of panic: You must be special. Ordinary is not okay. When I walked into a party projecting the Shiny Girl - she of the lighthearted flings and glitzy job - I was essentially doing the same thing. ~ Sara Eckel

Q and Beanpole and I giggled at the way our math teacher, Mr. Sung-Li, wore four pencils in his shirt pocket in case he was suddenly attacked by a multiplication problem or something. ~ Alan Sitomer

From the age of 13, I was attracted to physics and mathematics. My interest in these subjects derived mostly from popular science books that I read avidly. Early on I was fascinated by theoretical physics and determined to become a theoretical physicist. I had no real idea what that meant, but it seemed incredibly exciting to spend one's life attempting to find the secrets of the universe by using one's mind. ~ David Gross

Ask your child for information in a gentle, nonjudgmental way, with specific, clear questions. Instead of "How was your day?" try "What did you do in math class today?" Instead of "Do you like your teacher?" ask "What do you like about your teacher?" Or "What do you not like so much?" Let her take her time to answer. Try to avoid asking, in the overly bright voice of parents everywhere, "Did you have fun in school today?!" She'll sense how important it is that the answer be yes. ~ Susan Cain

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere. ~ Blaise Pascal

The revolutionary idea that defines the boundary between modern times and the past is the mastery of risk: the notion that the future is more than a whim of the gods and that men and women are not passive before nature. ~ Peter L. Bernstein

We, however, have all kinds of different ideas about what happiness is. Some must go bungee jumping to experience a rush of joy, while others find bliss staying home. Some are happy in a concert hall, listening to classical music, while children on a playground could be music to the ears of others. Some people experience elation when they solve a complicated equation, while for others a cancelled math class is a happy childhood memory. ~ Haim Shapira

Mathematics is the study of analogies between analogies. All science is. Scientists want to show that things that don't look alike are really the same. That is one of their innermost Freudian motivations. In fact, that is what we mean by understanding. ~ Gian-Carlo Rota

The most recent edition of the test - called the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) - was conducted in 2012, and it found that among the OECD's thirty-four members, the United States ranked twenty-seventh, twentieth, and seventeenth in math, science, and reading, respectively. ~ Fareed Zakaria

Geometry is the foundation of all painting. ~ Albrecht Durer

A mathematician's reputation rests on the number of bad proofs he has given. ~ Abram Samoilovitch Besicovitch

I. Those of us born by water are never afraid enough of drowning. Bruises used to trophy my knees from my death-defying tree climb jumps. Growing up, my backyard was a forest of blackberry bushes. I learned early nothing sweet will come to you unthorned.

II. At twelve your body becomes a currency. So Jenny and I sat down and cut up all our clothes into nothing. That year I failed math class but knew the exact number of calories in a carrot stick. I learned early being desired goes hand in hand with hunger.

III. The last time I tried to scream I felt my father climbing up through my throat and into my mouth.

IV. There is a certain kind of girl who reads Lolita at fourteen and finds religion. I painted my eyes black and sucked barroom cherries to red my tongue. There was a boy who promised Judas really did love Jesus. I learned early every kiss and betrayal are up for interpretation.

V. I think he must have conferenced with my nightmares on exactly how to hurt me.

VI. He never broke my heart. He only turned it into a compass that always points me back to him. ~ Clementine Von Radics

In colleges, there are no gender separations in courses of study, and students can freely choose their majors. There are no male and female math classes. But women generally choose college courses that pay less in the labor market. Those are the choices that women themselves make. Those choices contribute to the pay gap ... ~ Phyllis Schlafly

This queer crotchet [of Hamilton's] that algebra is the science of pure time has attracted many philosophers, and quite recently it has been exhumed and solemnly dissected by owlish metaphysicians seeking the philosopher's stone in the gall bladder of mathematics. ~ Eric Temple Bell

When I was a child, all problems had ended with a single word from my father. A smile from him was sunshine, his scowl a bolt of thunder. He was smart, and generous, and honorable without fail. He could exile a trespasser, check my math homework, and fix the leaky bathroom sink, all before dinner. For the longest time, I thought he was invincible. Above the petty problems that plagued normal people.
And now he was gone. ~ Rachel Vincent

And what are these fluxions? The velocities of evanescent increments. And what are these same evanescent increments? They are neither finite quantities, nor quantities infinitely small, nor yet nothing. May we not call them the ghosts of departed quantities ... ? ~ George Berkeley

In fact, NSF was the leading successful efforts to improve U.S. math and science education long before the Department of Education was even created. ~ Bob Inglis

It is to geometry that we owe in some sort the source of this discovery [of beryllium]; it is that [science] that furnished the first idea of it, and we may say that without it the knowledge of this new earth would not have been acquired for a long time, since according to the analysis of the emerald by M. Klaproth and that of the beryl by M. Bindheim one would not have thought it possible to recommence this work without the strong analogies or even almost perfect identity that Citizen Haüy found for the geometrical properties between these two stony fossils. ~ Antoine-François Fourcroy

Mechanics is the paradise of the mathematical sciences because by means of it one comes to the fruits of mathematics. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Human life is proverbially uncertain; few things are more certain than the solvency of a life-insurance company. ~ Arthur Eddington

The mathematical life of a mathematician is short. Work rarely improves after the age of twenty-five or thirty. If little has been accomplished by then, little will ever be accomplished. ~ Alfred Adler

He said, 'You have to understand, I'm an academic. I'm not trained in dealing with masses of people. I found out through the school of hard knocks that it is better not to deal with masses of people. It's not that they don't deserve the information but they really react in very strange ways. They get panicky and excited, or over-excited, and it is so easy for academics to forget that. We're trained in math. We're trained in science. We're not trained in the masses.'
He paused.
'The public is extremely wild,' he said, 'uncontrollably wild.'
Then he shrugged his shoulders.
'You have to understand,' he said, 'I'm an academic. ~ Jon Ronson

I would love to say that I wrote (Good Will Hunting). Here is the truth. In my obit it will say that I wrote it. People don't want to think those two cute guys wrote it. What happened was, they had the script. It was their script. They gave it to Rob [Reiner] to read, and there was a great deal of stuff in the script dealing with the F.B.I. trying to use Matt Damon for spy work because he was so brilliant in math. Rob said, "Get rid of it." They then sent them in to see me for a day - I met with them in New York - and all I said to them was, "Rob's right. Get rid of the F.B.I. stuff. Go with the family, go with Boston, go with all that wonderful stuff." And they did. I think people refuse to admit it because their careers have been so far from writing, and I think it's too bad. I'll tell you who wrote a marvelous script once, Sylvester Stallone. Rocky's a marvelous script. God, read it, it's wonderful. It's just got marvelous stuff. And then he stopped suddenly because it's easier being a movie star and making all that money than going in your pit and writing a script. But I did not write [Good Will Hunting], alas. I would not have written the "It's not your fault" scene. I'm going to assume that 148 percent of the people in this room have seen a therapist. I certainly have, for a long time. Hollywood always has this idea that it's this shrink with only one patient. I mean, that scene with Robin Williams gushing and Matt Damon and they're hugging, "It's not your fault, it's n ~ William Goldman

A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree or certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which the world suffers. ~ Bertrand Russell

Saying no", argues the author Kevin Ashton, "has more creative power than ideas, insights and talent combined. No guards time, the thread from which we weave our creations. The math of time is simple: you have less than you think and need more than you know. ~ Kevin Ashton

This world is of a single piece; yet, we invent nets to trap it for our inspection. Then we mistake our nets for the reality of the piece. In these nets we catch the fishes of the intellect but the sea of wholeness forever eludes our grasp. So, we forget our original intent and then mistake the nets for the sea.

Three of these nets we have named Nature, Mathematics, and Art. We conclude they are different because we call them by different names. Thus, they are apt to remain forever separated with nothing bonding them together. It is not the nets that are at fault but rather our misunderstanding of their function as nets. They do catch the fishes but never the sea, and it is the sea that we ultimately desire. ~ Martha Boles

It was while I was studying philosophy that I came to understand ... that it is no sign of moral or spiritual strength to believe that for which one has no evidence, neither a priori evidence as in math, nor a posteriori evidence as in science ... It's a violation almost immoral in its transgressiveness to shirk the responsibilities of rationality. ~ Rebecca Goldstein