“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 Pólya35
Hungarian mathematician 1887–1985Related quotes
Paul Ormerod book The Death of Economics
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Robert Adair (physicist) (1924) Physicist and author
Source: The Physics Of Baseball (Second Edition - Revised), Chapter 2, The Flight Of The baseball, p. 22
Max Born (1882–1970) physicist
"Einstein's Statistical Theories" in Albert Einstein : Philosopher-Scientist (1951) edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, p. 176
“Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.”
Alan Turing (1912–1954) British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist
Epigram to Robin Gandy (1954); reprinted in Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: the Enigma (Vintage edition 1992), p. 513.
“A baby is lots more fun than differential equations.”
Robert A. Heinlein book Podkayne of Mars
Source: Podkayne of Mars (1963), Chapter 10 (p. 127)
Leonid Kantorovich (1912–1986) Russian mathematician
"On one class of functional equations" (1936), as cited in: O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., " Leonid Kantorovich http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Kantorovich.html", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews
Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist
volume II; lecture 2, "Differential Calculus of Vector Fields"; section 2-1, "Understanding physics"; p. 2-1
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)
“Differential equations won't help you much in the design of aeroplanes — not yet, anyhow.”
Nevil Shute book Stephen Morris
Rawdon, the aircraft designer, to Morris, his aspiring protege.
Stephen Morris, ch. 3, p. 41 (1923, published posthumously in 1961)
Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi (1804–1851) German mathematician
Vorlesungen über Dynamik http://archive.org/details/cgjjacobisvorle00lottgoog [Lectures on Dynamics] (1842/3; publ. 1884).