“I then reached for a time honored tactic used by mathematicians: if you can't solve the real problem, change it into one you can solve.”

—  Mark Kac

Source: Enigmas Of Chance (1985), Chapter 6, Cornell II, p. 122.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update July 18, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I then reached for a time honored tactic used by mathematicians: if you can't solve the real problem, change it into on…" by Mark Kac?
Mark Kac photo
Mark Kac 17
Polish-American mathematician 1914–1984

Related quotes

Šantidéva photo

“If you can solve your problem, then what is the need of worrying?
If you cannot solve it, then what is the use of worrying?”

Šantidéva (685–763) 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar

Attributed

Heinrich Harrer photo
Joe Armstrong photo
U.G. Krishnamurti photo
Šantidéva photo
Richard Feynman photo

“The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. … No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

letter to Koichi Mano (3 February 1966); published in Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman (2005), p. 198, 201
also quoted by Freeman Dyson in "Wise Man" http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18350, The New York Review of Books (20 October 2005)
Context: The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. … No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it. You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself — it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of the naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher's ideals are.

Jeanette Winterson photo

“If you can't solve a problem, it's because you're playing by the rules”

Paul Arden (1940–2008) writer

Source: It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be

Larry Niven photo

“There’s always another problem behind the one you just solved. Does that mean that you should stop solving problems?”

Flash Crowd, section 7, in Three Trips in Time and Space (1973), edited by Robert Silverberg, p. 65

Harry Browne photo

“Once its considered proper to use government force to solve one person’s problem, force can be justified to solve anyone’s problem.”

Harry Browne (1933–2006) American politician and writer

Part One, chapter 4, page 18
Why Government Doesn't Work (1995)

Related topics