Quotes about math
page 2

“He'd never been all that good at math, but he was a goddamned world-famous expert in getting dumped.”

John Green book An Abundance of Katherines

Colin Singleton, p. 60
An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

“Our children grow up in a culture permeated with the idea that there are "smart people" and "dumb people". The social construction of the individual is as a bundle of aptitudes. There are people who are "good at math" and people who "can't do math." Everything is set up for children to attribute their first unsuccessful or unpleasant learning experiences to their own disabilities. As a result, children perceive failure as relegating them either to the group of "dumb people" or, more often, to a group of people "dumb at x" (where, as we have pointed out, x often equals mathematics). Within this framework children will define themselves in terms of their limitations, and this definition will be consolidated and reinforced throughout their lives. Only rarely does some exceptional event lead people to reorganize their intellectual self-image in such a way as to open up new perspectives on what is learnable.”

Seymour Papert book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

Source: Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (1980), Chapter 2, Mathophobia: The Fear of Learning

Children, People, Way, Mathematics

“We should all have access to the mathematical knowledge and tools needed to protect us from arbitrary decisions made by the powerful few in an increasingly math-driven world. Where there is no mathematics, there is no freedom.”

Edward Frenkel (1968) mathematician working in representation theory, algebraic geometry, and mathematical physics

Source: Love and Math, 2013, p. 5

World, Mathematics, Knowledge, Decision

“I love you more than bears love honey,
I love you more than Jews love money,
I love you more than Asians are good at math.
I love you even if it's not hip,
I love you more than black guys don't tip,
I love you like Puerto Ricans need baths.”

Sarah Silverman (1970) American comedian and actress

Satirical song
Jesus Is Magic (2005)

Love, Money, Guy

“It’s true that my initial training was in mathematics. However, almost by accident, I happened to take a course from Kenneth Arrow on “Information Economics,” which was so inspiring that I decided to change direction. It seemed to me that economics combined the best of both worlds: the rigor of mathematics with the immediate relevance of a social science. As for how much math I would recommend, I’d say that basic analysis, including measure theory, is certainly very useful. Also, linear algebra and stochastic processes always helps. But beyond that, I don’t think a huge mathematical investment is necessary to do economic theory unless you are planning to work in an extremely technical area.”

Eric Maskin (1950) American Nobel laureate in economics

" Interview with Eric S. Maskin: Questions by TSE students http://www.tseconomist.com/all-publications/interview-with-nobel-prize-winner-eric-maskin" at tseconomist.com, 04/07/2013; In answer to the question of why he decided to become an economist.

World, Mathematics, Thinking, Science

“From Adam Smith through John Maynard Keynes, economics had been mostly talk. At Harvard economics was talk. At MIT, Samuelson made it math.”

William Poundstone (1955) American writer

Part Three, Arbitrage, Paul Samuelson, p. 117
Fortune's Formula (2005)

“John Tate and I were asked by Nature magazine to write an obituary for Alexander Grothendieck. Now he is a hero of mine, the person that I met most deserving of the adjective "genius". I got to know him when he visited Harvard and John, Shurik (as he was known) and I ran a seminar on "s". His devotion to math, his disdain for formality and convention, his openness and what John and others call his naiveté struck a chord with me.”

David Mumford (1937) American mathematician

David Mumford. " Can one explain schemes to biologists http://www.dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/blog/2014/Grothendieck.html," at dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/blog, December 14, 2014.

Nature, Personality

“In Tehran university, at the math club, where I was studying the pictures of Fields medalists were lining the walls. I looked at them and said to myself, ‘Will I ever meet one of these people?’ At that time in Iran, I couldn’t even know that I’d be able to go to the West.”

Caucher Birkar (1978) Kurdish mathematician

"An innovator who brings order to an infinitude of equations" Quanta Magazine (2018)

People, Study, Universe, Time

“…I don't believe in the idea that there are a few peculiar people capable of understanding math and the rest of the world is normal. Math is a human discovery, and it's no more complicated than humans can understand. I had a calculus book once that said, "What one fool can do, another fool can." What we've been able to work out about nature may look abstract and threatening to someone who hasn't studied it, but it was fools who did it, and in the next generation, all the fools will understand it. There's a tendency to pomposity in all this, to make it all deep and profound…”

Richard Feynman book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

From Omni interview, "The Smartest Man in the World" (1979) or from the book p. 194.
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999)

People, Books, World, Fools

“The problem is not the math itself, but the blind acceptance and even idolatry we have applied to the quantitative models. These predictive models leave citizens befuddled and unable to defend or criticize model-based decisions. We argue that we should accept the fact that we live in a qualitative world when it comes to natural processes. We must rely on qualitative models that predict only direction, trends, or magnitudes of natural phenomena, and accept the possibility of being imprecise or wrong to some degree. We should demand that when models are used, the assumptions and model simplifications are clearly stated. A better method in many cases will be adaptive management, where a flexible approach is used, where we admit there are uncertainties down the road and we watch and adapt as nature rolls on.”

Orrin H. Pilkey (1934) American ecologist

Interview with Orrin Pilkey & Linda Jarvis-Pilkey https://web.archive.org/web/20080105132439/http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/publicity/pilkeyinterview.html. <br class="br">Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can’t Predict the Future (2007)

World, Nature, Problem, Decision

“Budgeting is a math exercise, number crunching. Planning is a logical, linear process. Strategizing requires a great deal of information about customers and competitors, along with conceptual skills. Visioning uses a very different part of the brain than budgeting. As the name implies, it involves trying to see possible futures. It inevitably has both a creative and emotional component (e. g., “How do we feel about the options?”). When you use “orthodox planning” to create a vision, frustration and failure are inevitable.”

John P. Kotter (1947) author of The heart of Change

Step 3, p. 68
The Heart of Change, (2002)

Feeling, Exercises, Failure, Future

“One form of math denial is the belief in the ability to make computers that prevent copyright infringement. Computers only ever work by making copies: restricting copying on the internet is like restricting wetness in water.”

Cory Doctorow (1971) Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author

The FBI wants a backdoor only it can use – but wanting it doesn't make it possible http://theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/24/the-fbi-wants-a-backdoor-only-it-can-use-but-wanting-it-doesnt-make-it-possible in The Guardian (24 February 2016)

Water

“One of the mysteries is how the human mind can hear a piece of music, a symphony from the beginning to the end, before beginning; or see a sculpture finished all the way round, when it doesn't exist. Now these faculties are the sort faculties which are needed in sciences, math, and medicine and all kind of things. But if one has them, one has to learn to use them... You can't start with a block and say: 'Now it's going to dictate me.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

You [the artist] dictate to it.
Source: 1961 - 1975, Art Talk, conversations with 15 woman artists', (1975), pp. 24-25

Music, Way, Learning, Science

“More than other subjects there’s a myth that you have to be an absolute genius to be good at maths and to enjoy it, so I think it’s less accessible for people. Even the word “maths” makes people screw their face up.”

Rachel Riley (1986) television presenter

Interview, The Observer, 12 Oct 2014 http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/oct/12/rachel-riley-countdown-stop-saying-girls-arent-good-at-maths

People, Thinking

“Here is our favorite equation: Us plus Them equals All of Us. It is very simple math. Try it sometime.”

Libba Bray Going Bovine

Source: Going Bovine (2009), p. 428
Context: In our travels, we have come across many equations — math for understanding the universe, for making music, for mapping stars, and also for tipping, which is important. Here is our favorite equation: Us plus Them equals All of Us. It is very simple math. Try it sometime. You probably won’t even need a pencil.

“Math is perfect (in principle), but mathematicians are not (because they are humans)”

Doron Zeilberger (1950) Israeli mathematician

Computerized Deconstruction. Appeared in Adv. Appl. Math. v. 31 (2003), 532-543.
Context: Math is perfect (in principle), but mathematicians are not (because they are humans), hence the mathematics that (human) mathematicians do is influenced by the weltanschauung of the people around them.

Perfection

“math> \frac{\partial \psi}{\partial t} = -\frac{2 \pi i}{h} E \psi

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist

The "Schrödinger equation", equation (3') in "Quantisierung als Eigenwertproblem, Vierte Mitteilung", Annalen der Physik (1926)

“It is possible to debate how strong America should be militarily in relation to the rest of the world. But that is not a debate that needs to be entered into to reduce the military budget by a large amount. If, beginning one year from now, we were to cut military spending by 25 percent from its projected levels, we would still be immeasurably stronger than any combination of nations with whom we might be engaged… Spending on military hardware does produce some jobs, but it is one of the most inefficient ways to deploy public funds to stimulate the economy. When I asked him years ago what he thought about military spending as stimulus, Alan Greenspan, to his credit, noted that... it was not good for the economy; and to the extent that it could be reduced, the economy would benefit…The math is compelling: if we do not make reductions approximating 25 percent of the military budget starting fairly soon, it will be impossible to continue to fund an adequate level of domestic activity even with a repeal of Bush’s tax cuts for the very wealthy.”

Barney Frank (1940) American politician, former member of the House of Representatives for Massachusetts

Barney Frank: ‘Cut the Military Budget’, The Nation https://www.thenation.com/article/cut-military-budget/ (2 March 2009)

World, Making love, Way, Strong

“This whole thing about who should get a check, and should we cut checks, you know, I understand those questions. That’s great. Those people should support H. R. 40, though, because that’s what H. R. 40 does. It tries to get that figured out, and get that math figured out, and figure out the best way to do it. But if we don’t actually have a study, we can’t actually answer those questions. You can’t ask a doctor to make a diagnosis before there’s an actual examination.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates (1975) writer, journalist, and educator

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Reparations Are Not Just About Slavery But Also Centuries of Theft & Racial Terror, Democracy Now (20 June 2019)

People, Making love, Way, Understanding

“Nye grew up in a science-minded family in Washington, D. C. His mom was a math and science whiz. His dad manufactured sundials. His grandfather was an organic scientist. Fittingly, one of young Bill’s favorite hangouts was the original Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, which looked like a small Quonset hut.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[NewsBank, Mark Bennett, Bill Nye still rocking science - TV personality making weekend appearance in town to help open Children's Museum, The Tribune-Star, Terre Haute, Indiana, September 24, 2010]

Family, Moms, Science

“He was god fearing and as spiritualist he paid visits to saints and sadhus, and the Shankaracharya of Sringeri Math conferred on him the title of Desh Ratna.”

Shankar Dayal Sharma (1918–1999) Indian politician

Source: Commissions and Omissions by Indian Presidents and Their Conflicts with the Prime Ministers Under the Constitution: 1977-2001, P.202.

God, Fear

“I think a lot of people may take some heart from this: a lot of the math, the heavy math in projective geometry, [...] took me a long time. There were many many years, a decade, when I was considered this graphics guru genius, when I really couldn't do from scratch [...] the mathematics that underpins a lot of that. But slowly, eventually, with a couple decades of experience, most of it did eventually sink in on me.”

John D. Carmack (1970) American computer programmer, engineer, and businessman

Speaking about mathematics in engineering, Quoted in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSCBCk4xVa0&t=1271s

People, Mathematics, Thinking, Time

“First, kill all the math classes beyond algebra. Stop wasting so much of our students’ time learning math. It’s not useful, it’s not helpful.”

Jonathan Haidt (1963) American psychologist

Source: Knowledge@Wharton https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/the-righteous-mind-why-liberals-and-conservatives-cant-get-along/ (2013)

Learning, Time, Help

“I was inspired to become an astronaut after watching the Apollo 11 moon landing as an eight-year-old kid. We need to get kids interested in space and in science and math in general.”

Leroy Chiao (1960) American astronaut and engineer

Source: Leroy Chiao (2021) cited in " Bringing Space Down to Earth With Toilets and Toys https://www.space.com/5513-bringing-space-earth-toilets-toys.html" on Space.com, 14 June 2008.

Science

“Relationships are the central part of life and also the hardest part of life and yet our schools teach us a minimum of 13 years of math and science and geography and history, but nothing about relationships and how to make them work.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Life, School, History, Science

Quotes about math page 2

Quotes about math
page 2