“Probability and statistics are now so obviously necessary tools for understanding many diverse things that we must not ignore them even for the average student.”

— Richard Hamming

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

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Richard Hamming 90

American mathematician and information theorist 1915–1998

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

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

“Teachers of science in schools and colleges must be masters of the tools for ensuring integrity in science and must instill them in their students.”

Lewis M. Branscomb (1926) physicist and science policy advisor

1994, p. 45
Integrity in Science (1985)

“As the average Athenian citizen was not awfully bright, it was necessary to have a great many of them on each jury. … They did not have to prove that they were completely ignorant before they were accepted as jurymen. That was taken for granted.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Pericles

“To understand God's thoughts we must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

As quoted in Chance Rules : An Informal Guide to Probability, Risk, and Statistics (1999) by Brian Everitt, p. 137

“The philosophy of the foundations of probability must be divorced from mathematics and statistics, exactly as the discussion of our intuitive space concept is now divorced from geometry.”

William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician

Introduction, The Nature of Probability Theory, p. 3.
An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition)

“Nowadays, all students have access to and indeed most own computers and are comfortable with the software used to compose music. There are probably too many musical options for them now and the trick is to limit the number of musical ideas so as to develop structure and continuity in their work.”

Jon Appleton (1939) American composer

"The Decline of Academic Freedom at Dartmouth College", 20 October 2005.
Letter published in "Appleton Leaves Dartmouth", 2005

“To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Idiot

The Idiot (1868–9)
Context: Nor is there any embarrassment in the fact that we're ridiculous, isn't it true? For it's actually so, we are ridiculous, light-minded, with bad habits, we're bored, we don't know how to look, how to understand, we're all like that, all, you, and I, and they! Now, you're not offended when I tell you to your face that you're ridiculous? And if so, aren't you material? You know, in my opinion it's sometimes even good to be ridiculous, if not better: we can the sooner forgive each other, the sooner humble ourselves; we can't understand everything at once, we cant start right out with perfection! To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well. This I tell you, you, who have already been able to understand... and not understand … so much. I'm not afraid for you now;

“Statistics are silly unless given context. If you have one foot in fire, the other in ice, can we legitimately say that, on average, you're warm? Hardly. Probabilities, in this case the chance that any one of us will die-by-Muslim, are statistically insignificant—unless this happens to you or to yours, to me or mine.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

2010s, 2017

“[Computers] are developing so rapidly that even computer scientists cannot keep up with them. It must be bewildering to most mathematicians and engineers… In spite of the diversity of the applications, the methods of attacking the difficult problems with computers show a great unity, and the name of Computer Sciences is being attached to the discipline as it emerges. It must be understood, however, that this is still a young field whose structure is still nebulous. The student will find a great many more problems than answers.”

George Forsythe (1917–1972) Stanford University computer scientist

George Forsythe (1961) "Engineering students must learn both computing and mathematics". J. Eng. Educ. 52 (1961), p. 177. as cited in ( Knuth, 1972 http://www.stanford.edu/dept/ICME/docs/history/forsythe_knuth.pdf) According to Donald Knuth in this quote Forsythe coined the term "computer science".

“I know that even now, having watched enough television, you probably won't even refer to them as lepers so as to spare their feelings. You probably call them 'parts-dropping-off challenged' or something.”

Christopher Moore book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Source: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

“Probability and statistics are now so obviously necessary tools for understanding many diverse things that we must not ignore them even for the average student.”

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