Richard Hamming: Doing

Richard Hamming was American mathematician and information theorist. Explore interesting quotes on doing.

Richard Hamming: 180 quotes1 like

“Education is what, when, and why to do things. Training is how to do it. Either one without the other is not of much use.”

Richard Hamming

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)
Context: I am concerned with educating and not training you.... Education is what, when, and why to do things. Training is how to do it. Either one without the other is not of much use. You might think education should precede training, but the kind of educating I am trying to do must be based on your past experiences and technical knowledge.<!-- Preface

“In science if you know what you are doing you should not be doing it.
In engineering if you do not know what you are doing you should not be doing it.”

Richard Hamming

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991), p. 5

“It is easy to measure your mastery of the results via a conventional examination; it is less easy to measure your mastery of doing mathematics”

Richard Hamming

Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985)
Context: It is easy to measure your mastery of the results via a conventional examination; it is less easy to measure your mastery of doing mathematics, of creating new (to you) results, and of your ability to surmount the almost infinite details to see the general situation.

“We do not always know what we are talking about.... Troubles... can be made to arise whenever what is being said includes itself—a self-referral situation.”

Richard Hamming

Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985)

“The people at the bottom do not have the larger, global view, but at the top they do not have the local view of all the details”

Richard Hamming

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)
Context: The people at the bottom do not have the larger, global view, but at the top they do not have the local view of all the details, many of which can often be very important, so either extreme gets poor results.

“Apparently an "art"—which almost by definition cannot be put into words—is probably best communicated by approaching it from many sides and doing so repeatedly, hoping thereby students will finally master enough of the art, or if you wish, style, to significantly increase their future contributions to society.”

Richard Hamming

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

“Perhaps thinking should be measured not by what you do but by how you do it.”

Richard Hamming

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

“Somewhere in the mid-to-late 1950s in an address to the President and V. Ps of Bell Laboratories I said, "At present we are doing 1 out of 10 experiments on the computers and 9 in the labs, but before I leave it will be 9 out of 10 on the machines". They did not believe me… by now we do somewhere between 90% to 99% on the machines… And this trend will go on!”

Richard Hamming

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

“If the prior distribution, at which I am frankly guessing, has little or no effect on the result, then why bother; and if it has a large effect, then since I do not know what I am doing how would I dare act on the conclusions drawn?”

Richard Hamming

Source: The Art of Probability for Scientists and Engineers (1991), p. 298

“The only generally agreed upon definition of mathematics is "Mathematics is what mathematicians do." […]
In the face of this difficulty [of defining "computer science"] many people, including myself at times, feel that we should ignore the discussion and get on with doing it. But as George Forsythe points out so well in a recent article*, it does matter what people in Washington D. C. think computer science is. According to him, they tend to feel that it is a part of applied mathematics and therefore turn to the mathematicians for advice in the granting of funds. And it is not greatly different elsewhere; in both industry and the universities you can often still see traces of where computing first started, whether in electrical engineering, physics, mathematics, or even business. Evidently the picture which people have of a subject can significantly affect its subsequent development. Therefore, although we cannot hope to settle the question definitively, we need frequently to examine and to air our views on what our subject is and should become.”

Richard Hamming

Hamming cites Forsythe, G.E., "What to do until the computer scientist comes", Am. Math. Monthly 75 (5), May 1968, p. 454-461.
One Man's View of Computer Science (1969)

“An idea which arises in the field, based on the direct experience of the people doing the job, cannot get going in a centrally controlled system… The not invented here (NIH) syndrome is one of the major curses of our society…”

Richard Hamming

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

“This is the type of AI I am interested in—what can the human and machine do together, and not in the competition which can arise. …There are doubts as to what fraction of the population can compete with computers, even with nice interactive prompting menus.”

Richard Hamming

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

“The calculus is probably the most useful single branch of mathematics. …I have found the ability to do simple calculus, easily and reliably, was the most valuable part of mathematics I ever learned.”

Richard Hamming

Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985)

“We constantly use the word "simplify", but its meaning depends on what you are going to do next, and there is no uniform definition.”

Richard Hamming

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)