#thematic

RAND scientists tried to tell their wives that the decision whether to buy or not to buy a washing machine was an 'optimization problem'. ↗

— Sylvia Nasar

#beauty

The oldest problem in economic education is how to exclude the incompetent. A certain glib mastery of verbiage-the ability to speak portentously and sententiously about the relation of money supply to the price level-is easy for the unlearned and may even be aided by a mildly enfeebled intellect. The requirement that there be ability to master difficult models, including ones for which mathematical competence is required, is a highly useful screening device. ↗

— John Kenneth Galbraith

#mathematics #education

I had been to school most all the time, and could spell, and read, and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don't reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I don't take no stock in mathematics, anyway. ↗

— Mark Twain

#humor #mathematics #school #education

I realise that in this undertaking I place myself in a certain opposition to views widely held concerning the mathematical infinite and to opinions frequently defended on the nature of numbers. ↗

— Georg Cantor

#concerning #defended #frequently #held #i

The problem is that no ethical system has ever achieved consensus. Ethical systems are completely unlike mathematics or science. This is a source of concern. ↗

— Daniel Dennett

#completely #concern #consensus #ethical #ever

Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules... Mathematicians are more like classical composers. ↗

— Brian Greene

#bend #classical #classical composers #composers #like

Everyone knows what a curve is, until he has studied enough mathematics to become confused through the countless number of possible exceptions. ↗

— Felix Klein

#confused #countless #curve #enough #everyone

To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers. ↗

— Paul Klee

#concerns #emphasize #itself #like #mathematical

I took a break from acting for four years to get a degree in mathematics at UCLA, and during that time I had the rare opportunity to actually do research as an undergraduate. And myself and two other people co-authored a new theorem: Percolation and Gibbs States Multiplicity for Ferromagnetic Ashkin-Teller Models on Two Dimensions, or Z2. ↗

— Danica McKellar

#actually #break #degree #dimensions #during

Mathematics are the result of mysterious powers which no one understands, and which the unconscious recognition of beauty must play an important part. Out of an infinity of designs a mathematician chooses one pattern for beauty's sake and pulls it down to earth. ↗

— Marston Morse

#chooses #designs #down #down to earth #earth