John Allen Paulos citations (48 citations)

John Allen Paulos: 48 citations 0 J'aime

John Allen Paulos: Citations en anglais

“Disproving a claim that something exists is often quite difficult, and this difficulty is often mistaken for evidence that the claim is true…Presented as I am periodically with these and other fantastical claims, I sometimes feel a little like a formally dressed teetotaler at a drunken orgy for reiterating that not being able to conclusively refute the claims does not constitute evidence for them.”

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John Allen Paulos

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 3, “Pseudoscience” (pp. 95-96; ellipsis represents elision of new age examples)

“There is no such thing as free lunch, and even if there were, there’d be no guarantee against indigestion.”

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John Allen Paulos

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 5, “Statistics, Trade-Offs, and Society” (p. 147)

“A tendency to drastically underestimate the frequency of coincidences is a prime characteristic of innumerates, who generally accord great significance to correspondences of all sorts while attributing too little significance to quite conclusive but less flashy statistical evidence.”

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John Allen Paulos

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 2, “Probability and Coincidence” (p. 35)

“Any bit of nonsense can be computerized—astrology, biorhythms, the I Ching—but that doesn’t make the nonsense any more valid.”

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John Allen Paulos

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 3, “Pseudoscience” (p. 68)

“Bad things happen periodically, and they’re going to happen to somebody. Why not you?”

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John Allen Paulos

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 4, “Whence Innumeracy?” (p. 110)

“Too often, this concern for the big picture is simply obscurantist and is put forward by people who prefer vagueness and mystery to (partial) answers. Vagueness is at times necessary and mystery is never in short supply, but I don’t think they’re anything to worship. Genuine science and mathematical precision are more intriguing than are the “facts” published in supermarket tabloids or a romantic innumeracy which fosters credulity, stunts skepticism, and dulls one to real imponderables.”

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John Allen Paulos

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 4, “Whence Innumeracy?” (pp. 126-127)

“Innumerate people characteristically have a strong tendency to personalize—to be misled by their own experiences, or by the media’s focus on individuals and drama.”

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John Allen Paulos

Introduction (p. 6)
Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988)

“There surely is something to these terms, but too often they’re the result of minds intent on discovering meaning where there is only probability.”

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John Allen Paulos

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 2, “Probability and Coincidence” (p. 62)

“If we’re not keenly aware of the choices we’re making, we’re not likely to work for better ones.”

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John Allen Paulos

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 5, “Statistics, Trade-Offs, and Society” (p. 176)

“To follow foolish precedents, and wink with both eyes, is easier than to think.”

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John Allen Paulos

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 3, “Pseudoscience” (p. 67; quoting William Cowper)

“The moral, again, is that some unlikely event is likely to occur, whereas it’s much less likely that a particular one will…The paradoxical conclusion is that it would be very unlikely for unlikely events not to occur. If you don’t specify a predicted event precisely, there are an indeterminate number of ways for an event of that general kind to take place.”

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John Allen Paulos

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 2, “Probability and Coincidence” (pp. 37-38; ellipsis represents elision of examples)

“Correlation and causation are two quite different words, and the innumerate are more prone to mistake them than most.”

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John Allen Paulos

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 5, “Statistics, Trade-Offs, and Society” (p. 159)

“I remember thinking of mathematics as a kind of omnipotent protector. You could prove things to people and they would have to believe you whether they liked you or not.”

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John Allen Paulos

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 4, “Whence Innumeracy?” (p. 99)

“There’s always enough random success to justify almost anything to someone who wants to believe.”

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John Allen Paulos

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 2, “Probability and Coincidence” (p. 44)

“The whole weight of science is the prima facie evidence against a miracle having occurred.”

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John Allen Paulos

Part 2 “Four Subjective Arguments”, Chapter 5 “The Argument from Interventions (and Miracles, Prayers, and Witnesses)” (p. 88)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

“Confirmation of a person’s unreliable statement by another unreliable person makes the statement even less reliable.”

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John Allen Paulos

Part 2 “Four Subjective Arguments”, Chapter 2 “The Argument from Prophecy (and the Bible Codes)” (p. 65)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

“Claiming that a holy book’s claims are undeniable because the book itself claims them to be is convincing only to the convinced.”

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John Allen Paulos

Part 2 “Four Subjective Arguments”, Chapter 2 “The Argument from Prophecy (and the Bible Codes)” (p. 64)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

“Rigid distinctions between the deep and the shallow are generally themselves quite superficial.”

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John Allen Paulos livre A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

Section 5, “Food , Book Reviews, Sports, Obituaries” Introduction (p. 169)
A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1995)

“In general, any differences between two groups will always be greatly accentuated at the extremes.”

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John Allen Paulos livre A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

Section 2, “Local, Social, and Business Issues” Chapter 11, “Company Charged with Ethnic Bias in Hiring” (p. 60)
A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1995)

“You can only predict things after they’ve happened.”

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John Allen Paulos livre A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

Section 1, “Politics, Economics, and the Nation” Introduction (p. 7; quoting Eugene Ionesco)
A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1995)

“Together the, two ingredients—a perceived incongruity with a point and an appropriate emotional climate—seem to be both necessary and sufficient for humor.”

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John Allen Paulos

Source: Mathematics and Humor: A Study of the Logic of Humor (1980), Chapter 1, “Mathematics and Humor” (p. 10)

“The necessity of this psychic stepping back (or up) to the metalevel is probably what is meant when people say that a sense of perspective is needed for an appreciation of humor. It also explains why dogmatists, idealogues, and others with one-track minds are often notoriously humorless.”

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John Allen Paulos

Source: Mathematics and Humor: A Study of the Logic of Humor (1980), Chapter 2, “Axioms, Levels, and Iteration” (p. 27)

“While not a panacea, candidly recognizing the absence of any good logical arguments for God’s existence, giving up on divine allies and advocates as well as taskmasters and tormentors, and prizing a humane, reasonable, and brave outlook just might help move this world a bit closer to a heaven on earth.”

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John Allen Paulos

Part 3 “Four Psycho-Mathematical Arguments”, Chapter 6 “Atheists, Agnostics, and “Brights”” (p. 149)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

“It’s always healthy to recognize facts.”

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John Allen Paulos

Part 3 “Four Psycho-Mathematical Arguments”, Chapter 6 “Atheists, Agnostics, and “Brights”” (p. 146)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

“The connections among morality, prudence, and religion are complicated and beyond my concerns here. I would like to counter, however, the claim regularly made by religious people that atheists and agnostics are somehow less moral or law-abiding than they. There is absolutely no evidence for this, and I suspect whatever average distance there is along the nebulous dimension of morality has the opposite algebraic sign.”

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John Allen Paulos

Part 3 “Four Psycho-Mathematical Arguments”, Chapter 5 “The Gambling Argument (and Emotions from Prudence to Fear)” (p. 139)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

“The universe acts on us, we adapt to it, and the notions that we develop as a result, including the mathematical ones, are in a sense taught us by the universe. Evolution has selected those of our ancestors (both human and not) whose behavior and thought were consistent with the workings of the universe.”

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John Allen Paulos

Part 3 “Four Psycho-Mathematical Arguments”, Chapter 4 “The Universality Argument (and the Relevance of Morality and Mathematics)” (p. 131)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

“It’s become somewhat fashionable to say that religion and science are growing together and are no longer incompatible. This convergence is, in my opinion, illusory. In fact, I don’t believe that any attempt to combine these very disparate bodies of ideas can succeed intellectually.”

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John Allen Paulos

Part 2 “Four Subjective Arguments”, Chapter 5 “The Argument from Interventions (and Miracles, Prayers, and Witnesses)” (pp. 88-89)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

“You would think that the obvious irreligious objection would come to almost anyone’s mind when reading a religious tome or holy book. What if you don’t believe the holy book’s presuppositions and narrative claims and simply ask for independent argument or evidence for God’s existence? What if you’re not persuaded by the argument that God exists because His assertion that He exists and discussion of His various exploits appear in this book about Him that believers say He inspired?”

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John Allen Paulos

Part 2 “Four Subjective Arguments”, Chapter 2 “The Argument from Prophecy (and the Bible Codes)” (p. 63)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

“For the record, natural selection is a highly nonrandom process that acts on the genetic variation produced by random mutation and genetic drift and results in those organisms with more adaptive traits differentially surviving and reproducing.”

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John Allen Paulos

Part 1 “Four Classical Arguments”, Chapter 2 “The Argument from Design (and Some Creationist Calculations)” (p. 19)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)