#thematic

He could not believe that any of them might actually hit somebody. If one did, what a nowhere way to go: killed by accident; slain not as an individual but by sheer statistical probability, by the calculated chance of searching fire, even as he himself might be at any moment. Mathematics! Mathematics! Algebra! Geometry! When 1st and 3d Squads came diving and tumbling back over the tiny crest, Bell was content to throw himself prone, press his cheek to the earth, shut his eyes, and lie there. God, oh, God! Why am I here? Why am I here? After a moment's thought, he decided he better change it to: why are we here. That way, no agency of retribution could exact payment from him for being selfish. ↗

— James Jones

#bell #death #fear #geometry #machine-guns

I had done quite a bit of research about math education when I spoke before Congress in 2000 about the importance of women in mathematics. The session of Congress was all about raising more scholarships for girls in college. I told them I felt that it's too late by college. ↗

— Danica McKellar

#before #bit #college #congress #done

This book is about physics and its about physics and its relationship with mathematics and how they seem to be intimately related and to what extent can you explore this relationship and trust it. ↗

— Roger Penrose

#book #explore #extent #how #intimately

The thematic, psychological, and cultural concerns of a writer are more relevant than whatever literary mode he or she chooses to deal with in any given novel. ↗

— Norman Spinrad

#chooses #concerns #cultural #deal #given

Thus, the more succinctly a train of thought was expounded, and the more comprehensive the unity of its basic idea, the closer it would approximate to the prerequisites of the mathematical way of thinking. ↗

— Max Bill

#basic #basic idea #closer #comprehensive #idea

Music assists him in the use of harmonic and mathematical proportion. ↗

— Marcus V. Pollio

#harmonic #him #mathematical #music #proportion

The traditional mathematician recognizes and appreciates mathematical elegance when he sees it. I propose to go one step further, and to consider elegance an essential ingredient of mathematics: if it is clumsy, it is not mathematics. ↗

— Edsger Dijkstra

#clumsy #consider #elegance #essential #further

We are mathematical equations where your life is the sum of all choices you've made until now. The good news is you can change the equation so that you start making a difference in your life. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#choices #inspirational #life #mathematical #motivational

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

I abandoned the assigned problems in standard calculus textbooks and followed my curiosity. Wherever I happened to be--a Vegas casino, Disneyland, surfing in Hawaii, or sweating on the elliptical in Boesel's Green Microgym--I asked myself, "Where is the calculus in this experience? ↗

— Jennifer Ouellette

#life-lessons #mathematics #experience