“Even if without the Scott's proverbial thrift, the difficulty of solving differential equations is an incentive to using them parsimoniously.”

Mathematical Methods in Science (1977)
Context: Even if without the Scott's proverbial thrift, the difficulty of solving differential equations is an incentive to using them parsimoniously. Happily here is a commodity of which a little may be made to go a long way.... the equation of small oscillations of a pendulum also holds for other vibrational phenomena. In investigating swinging pendulums we were, albeit unwittingly, also investigating vibrating tuning forks.<!--p.224

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George Pólya 35
Hungarian mathematician 1887–1985

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