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Catherine's Quotation PageClick here to see the newest addtions to the collection.Blaise Pascal The last thing one knows when writing a book is what to put first.
Douglas R. Hofstadter Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. Sir Josiah Stamp The government are very keen on amassing statistics -- they collect
them, add them, raise them to the n'th power, take the cube root, and
prepare wonderful diagrams. But what you must never forget is that every
one of those figures comes in the first place from the chowty dar [village
watchman] who just puts down what he pleases. Andrew Lang He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts . . . for support rather than illumination. Mark McLemore, Mariners infielder, referring to Brett Boone's hit in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series, 2001: Boonie's hit, on a scale of 1 to 10, was huge. Niels Henrik David Bohr Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes, which can be made, in a very narrow field. Ambrose Bierce Predict, v. To relate an event that has not occurred, is not occurring
and will not occur. T.S. Eliot Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future and time future contained in time past. John Wayne Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes to us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday. William Hazlitt Most of the methods for measuring the lapse of time have, I believe,
been the contrivance of monks and religious recluses, who, finding time
hang heavy on their hands, were at some pains to see how they got rid of
it. Abraham Lincoln If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it. I fear explanations explanatory of things explained. Hearcleitus (513 BCE) All is flux, nothing is stationary. Stephen Gallogly The role of the economist is to make weathermen look good. Edmund Burke The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and
calculators has succeeded. John Kenneth Galbraith There can be no question, however, that prolonged commitment to
mathematical exercises in economics can be damaging. It leads to the
atrophy of judgement and intuition . . . Ecclesiastes 9:11 I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. Isaiah 40:4 Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain. Graffiti Today is the tomorrow you were worrying about yesterday. William Allen White I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today. Sir Kendall The essential idea of trend is that it shall be smooth. Andrew Harvey There is no fundamental reason, though, why a trend should be
smooth. Wayne Fuller What is a trend? A trend is an estimate that comes from a trend estimator. The public trusts us to design the questionnaire, train the
interviewers, collect the data, tabulate the data, and then, at the very
last moment, you worry that the public doesn't trust us to get the
seasonal adjustment correct? C.W.J. Granger, refering to seasonal adjustment diagnostics The criteria I suggested have been shown to be impossible to achieve in practice, and, thus, should be replaced by achievable criteria. However, I am at a loss to know what these criteria should be. William Bell and Steve Hillmer Whereas seasonal adjustment was originally done as part of the analysis
of time series data by statisticians and economists, computerized seasonal
adjustment has come to serve the needs of government officials, business
managers and journalists---on the whole, a statistically unsophisticated
group with little interest in time series modeling. Charles Babbage Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all. On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. Steve McConnell A good program never puts out garbage, regardless of what it takes in.
A good program uses 'garbage in, nothing out'; 'garbage in, error message
out'; 'no garbage allowed in' instead. 'Garbage in, garbage out' is the
mark of a sloppy program. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor
of calculation. Dr. John Wallin Is it better to suffer the strings and errors of outrageous FORTRAN or suffer through the C of discontent? Josiah Willard Gibbs Mathematics is a language. J.E. Littlewood A good mathematical joke is better, and better mathematics, than a
dozen mediocre papers. Alfréd Rényi If I feel unhappy, I do mathematics to become happy. If I am happy, I do mathematics to keep happy. Gottfried Whilhem Leibniz Music is the pleasure the human soul experiences from counting without
being aware that it is counting. Freeman Dyson The bottom line for mathematicians is that the architecture has to be
right. In all the mathematics that I did, the essential point was to find
the right architecture. It's like building a bridge. Once the main lines
of the structure are right, then the details miraculously fit. The problem
is the overall design. Karl Friedrich Gauss I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am
to arrive at them. You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never
satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and
writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length. Agatha Christie I continued to do arithmetic with my father, passing proudly through fractions to decimals. I eventually arrived at the point where so many cows ate so much grass, and tanks filled with water in so many hours. I found it quite enthralling. Ronan Conroy I'm not an outlier; I just haven't found my distribution yet. Alexander Pope Order is Heaven's first law. Plato I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. Mathematics is like checkers in being suitable for the young, not too difficult, amusing, and without peril to the state. St. Augustine The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. Matthew Pordage One of the endearing things about mathematicians is the extent to which
they will go to avoid doing any real work. Jonathon Edwards When I am violently beset with temptations, or cannot rid myself of
evil thoughts, [I resolve] to do some Arithmetic, or Geometry, or some
other study, which necessarily engages all my thoughts, and unavoidably
keeps them from wandering. Art Buchwald Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got. Louis Pasteur Chance favors only the prepared mind. In good philosophy, the word 'cause' ought to be reserved to the
single divine impulse that has formed the universe. Albert Einstein The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. I never think of the future. It comes soon enough. Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity,
I do not understand it myself anymore. Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics, I assure you that mine are greater. As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. The truth of a theory is in your mind, not in your eyes. I want to know how God created this world.
I am not interested in this or that phenomenon in the spectrum of this or that
element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details. If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut. Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe. Not everything that counts can be counted,
and not everything that can be counted counts. I defend the Good God against the idea of a continuous game of dice. You believe in God playing dice, and I in perfect laws in the world of things existing as real objects, which I try to grasp in a wildly speculative way. Stephen Williams Hawking Not only does God definitely play dice, but He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen. Carl Jacobi God ever arithmetizes. Mathematics is the science of what is clear by itself. Leonardo da Vinci No human investigation can be called real science if it cannot be demonstrated mathematically. Andrejs Dunkels It is easy to lie with statistics. It is hard to tell the truth without it. Leonard H. Courtney, often attributed to Mark Twain, who himself often attributed the quote to Benjamin Disraeli. There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. Voltaire God is supreme logic, a distant home. Morris Kline Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence. Martin Luther Medicine makes people ill, mathematics makes them sad, and theology makes them sinful. Cartoon, The New Yorker, December 10, 1984 One man to another as they walk down the street at Christmas time: Cartoon, Sun Newspaper, London, 29 February 1972 One fortune teller to another: Hugo Rossi In the fall of 1972 President Nixon announced that the rate of increase
of inflation was decreasing. This was the first time a sitting president
used the third derivative to advance his case for
reelection. Edgar Allen Poe To speak algebraically, Mr. M. is execrable, but Mr. G. is (x + 1)-
ecrable. Susan Landau There's a touch of the priesthood in the academic world, a sense that a
scholar should not be distracted by the mundane tasks of day-to-day living. I used
to have great stretches of time to work. Now I have research thoughts while
making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Sure it's impossible to
write down ideas while reading "Curious George" to a two-year-old.
On the other hand, as my husband was leaving graduate school for his first
job, his thesis advisor told him, "You may wonder how a professor gets any
research done when one has to teach, advise students, serve on
committees, referee papers, write letters of recommendation, interview
prospective faculty. Well, I take long showers." Gian-carlo Rota We often hear that mathematics consists mainly of "proving theorems."
Is a writer's job mainly that of "writing sentences?" Bertrand Russell How dare we speak of the laws of chance? Is not chance the antithesis
of all law? Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the
idea of approximation. A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only
that degree or certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became
general, cure most of the ills from which the world suffers. Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he
was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by
examining his wives' mouths. I wanted certainty in the kind of way in which people want religious faith.
I thought that certainty is more likely to be
found in mathematics than elsewhere. But I discovered that many
mathematical demonstrations, which my teachers
expected me to accept, were full of fallacies, and that, if certainty
were indeed discoverable in mathematics, it would
be in a new field of mathematics, with more solid foundations than those
that had hitherto been thought secure. But as
the work proceeded, I was continually reminded of the fable about the
elephant and the tortoise. having constructed an
elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the
elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a
tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was no more
secure than the elephant, and after some twenty
years of very arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was
nothing more that I could do in the way of making
mathematical knowledge indubitable. Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth,
but supreme beauty —a beauty cold and austere,
like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker
nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music,
yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as
only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight,
the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is
the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in
mathematics as surely as poetry. Ernest Rutherford If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better
experiment. Mary-Chapin Carpenter The stars might lie, but the numbers never do. Penn and Teller Luck is probability taken personally. Nursery Rhyme -- an old spin on "trading day" Monday's child is fair of face, William Shakespeare The Witches: Double, double, toil and trouble; Macbeth: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow I am ill at these numbers. Lewis Carroll The different branches of Arithmetic -- Ambition, Distraction,
Uglification, and Derision. "Can you do addition?" the White Queen asked. "What's one and one and
one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?" "It's very good jam," said the Queen. Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe
impossible things." Sir Winston Spencer Churchill I had a feeling once about Mathematics - that I saw it all. Depth
beyond depth was revealed to me - the Byss and Abyss. I saw - as one might
see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor's Show - a quantity
passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw
exactly why it happened and why the tergiversation was inevitable but it
was after dinner and I let it go. It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of
quotations. 
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Last update: 6 February 2007 |
