#mathematics

Not a few other very eminent and scholarly men made the same request, urging that I should no longer through fear refuse to give out my work for the common benefit of students of Mathematics. ↗

— Nicolaus Copernicus

#common #eminent #fear #few #give

So how does one go about proving something like this? It's not like being a lawyer, where the goal is to persuade other people; nor is it like a scientist testing a theory. This is a unique art form within the world of rational science. We are trying to craft a "poem of reason" that explains fully and clearly and satisfies the pickiest demands of logic, while at the same time giving us goosebumps. ↗

— Paul Lockhart

#math #mathematics #reason #art

Existe una opinión generalizada según la cual la matemática es la ciencia más difícil cuando en realidad es la más simple de todas. La causa de esta paradoja reside en el hecho de que, precisamente por su simplicidad, los razonamientos matemáticos equivocados quedan a la vista. En una compleja cuestión de política o arte, hay tantos factores en juego y tantos desconocidos e inaparentes, que es muy difícil distinguir lo verdadero de lo falso. El resultado es que cualquier tonto se cree en condiciones de discutir sobre política y arte -y en verdad lo hace- mientras que mira la matemática desde una respetuosa distancia. ↗

— Ernesto Sabato

#matemáticas #mathematics #science #art

What makes this story so remarkable is that throughout my early childhood I had ongoing learning difficulties, particularly in mathematics. I struggled to learn the multiplication table, and no matter how hard I tried, I simply couldn't remember 6 times 7 or 7 times 8. ↗

— Andrew Lo

#difficulties #early #early childhood #had #hard

One can be enlightened about proofs as well as theorems. Without enlightenment, one is merely reduced to memorizing proofs. With enlightenment about a proof, its flow becomes clear and it can become an item of astonishing beauty. In addition, the need to memorize disappears because the proof has become part of your soul. ↗

— Herbert S. Gaskill

#beauty

If we increase r [in a logistic map] even more, we will eventually force the system into a period-8 limit cycle, then a period-16 cycle, and so on. The amount that we have to increase r to get another period doubling gets smaller and smaller for each new bifurcation. This cascade of period doublings is reminiscent of the race between Achilles and the tortoise, in that an infinite number of bifurcations (or time steps in the race) can be confined to a local region of finite size. At a very special critical value, the dynamical system will fall into what is essentially an infinite-period limit cycle. This is chaos. ↗

— Gary William Flake

#mathematics #beauty

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. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#beauty #math #mathematics #sculpture #art

My first feeling was that there was no way to continue. Writing isn't like math;in math, two plus two always equals four no matter what your mood is like. With writing, the way you feel changes everything. ↗

— Stephenie Meyer

#mathematics #sadness #writing #change

Nothing comforted Sabine like long division. That was how she had passed time waiting for Phan and then Parsifal to come back from their tests. She figured the square root of the date while other people knit and read. Sabine blamed much of the world's unhappiness on the advent of calculators. ↗

— Ann Patchett

#dating

The ‘Muse’ is not an artistic mystery, but a mathematical equation. The gift are those ideas you think of as you drift to sleep. The giver is that one you think of when you first awake. ↗

— Roman Payne

#artistic #creativity #equations #gifts #ideas