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d8e760b
|
Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.
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|
rules-of-life
meaning-of-life
math
|
Mark Haddon |
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c25ae41
|
"Do you mean ter tell me," he growled at the Dursleys, "that this boy--this boy!--knows nothin' abou'--about ANYTHING?" Harry thought this was going a bit far. He had been to school, after all, and his marks weren't bad. "I know some things," he said. "I can, you know, do math and stuff."
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|
humor
ignorance
math
|
J.K. Rowling |
|
7f65379
|
"Lynn, she saved half our faction from stuff," says Marlene, tapping the bandage on her arm from where the Dauntless traitors shot her. "Well, half of half of our faction." "In some circles they call that a quarter, Mar," Lynn says."
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|
math
|
Veronica Roth |
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fe2489b
|
"I've got a few ideas," (Amy) admitted. "But I don't know where we're going in the long term. I mean - have you ever thought about what this ultimate treasure could be?" "Something cool." (Dan) "Oh, that's real helpful. I mean, what could make somebody the most powerful Cahill in history? And why thirty-nine clues?" Dan shrugged. "Thirty-nine is a sweet number. It's thirteen times three. It's also the sum of five prime numbers in a row - 3,5,7,11,13. if you add the first three powers of three, 3 to the first, 3 to the second, and s to the third, you get thirty-nine." Amy stared at him. "How did you know that?" "What do you mean? It's obvious."
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|
treasure
dan-cahill
amy-cahill
math
|
Rick Riordan |
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9c3634a
|
There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities... I cannot tell you how grateful I am for our little infinity. You gave me forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.
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|
numbers
john-green
hazel-grace
infinities
tfios
math
|
John Green |
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773d270
|
He walked straight out of college into the waiting arms of the Navy. They gave him an intelligence test. The first question on the math part had to do with boats on a river: Port Smith is 100 miles upstream of Port Jones. The river flows at 5 miles per hour. The boat goes through water at 10 miles per hour. How long does it take to go from Port Smith to Port Jones? How long to come back? Lawrence immediately saw that it was a trick question. You would have to be some kind of idiot to make the facile assumption that the current would add or subtract 5 miles per hour to or from the speed of the boat. Clearly, 5 miles per hour was nothing more than the average speed. The current would be faster in the middle of the river and slower at the banks. More complicated variations could be expected at bends in the river. Basically it was a question of hydrodynamics, which could be tackled using certain well-known systems of differential equations. Lawrence dove into the problem, rapidly (or so he thought) covering both sides of ten sheets of paper with calculations. Along the way, he realized that one of his assumptions, in combination with the simplified Navier Stokes equations, had led him into an exploration of a particularly interesting family of partial differential equations. Before he knew it, he had proved a new theorem. If that didn't prove his intelligence, what would? Then the time bell rang and the papers were collected. Lawrence managed to hang onto his scratch paper. He took it back to his dorm, typed it up, and mailed it to one of the more approachable math professors at Princeton, who promptly arranged for it to be published in a Parisian mathematics journal. Lawrence received two free, freshly printed copies of the journal a few months later, in San Diego, California, during mail call on board a large ship called the U.S.S. Nevada. The ship had a band, and the Navy had given Lawrence the job of playing the glockenspiel in it, because their testing procedures had proven that he was not intelligent enough to do anything else.
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|
intelligence
navy
math
|
Neal Stephenson |
|
6b6ccf0
|
I can see patterns in events, and behaviors; in mathematics, I follow slower
|
|
patterns
slow
math
|
Jacqueline Carey |
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fa4159a
|
The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.
|
|
shakespeare
stars
science
grasp
molecules
mental
study
ghost
math
mathematics
hamlet
william-shakespeare
|
Alfred North Whitehead |
|
1ac5210
|
"I had one class in the morning, the mysteriously named "Further Maths". It was two hours long and so deeply frightening that I think I went into a trance."
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|
math
|
Maureen Johnson |
|
fd514d9
|
"Yes, but you need to learn your maths." "I don't need to, really. I already know how to count to a hundred. And I'm sure I'll never need ore than a hundred of anything."
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|
hundred
math
|
Lisa Kleypas |
|
9ed0312
|
And what he meant was that maths wasn't like life because in life there are no straightforward answers in the end
|
|
math
|
Mark Haddon |
|
c863cfb
|
No doubt there are some who, when confronted with a line of mathematical symbols, however simply presented, can only see the face of a stern parent or teacher who tried to force into them a non-comprehending parrot-like apparent competence--a duty and a duty alone--and no hint of magic or beauty of the subject might be allowed to come through.
|
|
hate
love
teacher
math
mathematics
school
|
Roger Penrose |
|
488beb7
|
"Another mistaken notion connected with the law of large numbers is the idea that an event is more or less likely to occur because it has or has not happened recently. The idea that the odds of an event with a fixed probability increase or decrease depending on recent occurrences of the event is called the gambler's fallacy. For example, if Kerrich landed, say, 44 heads in the first 100 tosses, the coin would not develop a bias towards the tails in order to catch up! That's what is at the root of such ideas as "her luck has run out" and "He is due." That does not happen. For what it's worth, a good streak doesn't jinx you, and a bad one, unfortunately , does not mean better luck is in store."
|
|
probability
statistics
math
luck
|
Leonard Mlodinow |
|
a25372f
|
was the strangest man in all of mathematics, probably in the entire history of science. He has been compared to a bursting supernova, illuminating the darkest, most profound corners of mathematics, before being tragically struck down by tuberculosis at the age of 33... Working in total isolation from the main currents of his field, he was able to rederive 100 years' worth of Western mathematics on his own. The tragedy of his life is that much of his work was wasted rediscovering known mathematics.
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|
tragedy
history
science
srinivasa-ramanujan
strange
math
mathematics
|
Michio Kaku |
|
ef129f1
|
Oh, figures!' answered Ned. 'You can make figures do whatever you want.
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|
numbers
math
|
Jules Verne |
|
ddd84fe
|
He calculated the number of bricks in the wall, first in twos and then in tens and finally in sixteens. The numbers formed up and marched past his brain in terrified obedience. Division and multiplication were discovered. Algebra was invented and provided an interesting diversion for a minute or two. And then he felt the fog of numbers drift away, and looked up and saw the sparkling, distant mountains of calculus.
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|
math
mathematics
|
Terry Pratchett |
|
d6c1d52
|
Music was not so very different from mathematics. It was all just patterns and sequences. The only difference was that they hung in the air instead of on a piece of paper. Dancing was a grand equation. One side was sound, the other movement. The dancer's job was to make them equal.
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|
music
dancer
dancing
math
mathematics
|
Julia Quinn |
|
4ab75d7
|
It is all about numbers. It is all about sequence. It's the mathematical logic of being alive. If everything kept to its normal progression, we would live with the sadness--cry and then walk--but what really breaks us cleanest are the losses that happen out of order.
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|
loss
life
numbers
logic
math
|
Aimee Bender |
|
fe1b286
|
Is it possible that the Pentateuch could not have been written by uninspired men? that the assistance of God was necessary to produce these books? Is it possible that ascertained the mechanical principles of 'Virtual Velocity,' the laws of falling bodies and of all motion; that ascertained the true position of the earth and accounted for all celestial phenomena; that discovered his three laws--discoveries of such importance that the 8th of May, 1618, may be called the birth-day of modern science; that gave to the world the Method of Fluxions, the Theory of Universal Gravitation, and the Decomposition of Light; that , , , and , almost completed the science of mathematics; that all the discoveries in optics, hydrostatics, pneumatics and chemistry, the experiments, discoveries, and inventions of , , and , of , and and of all the pioneers of progress--that all this was accomplished by uninspired men, while the writer of the Pentateuch was directed and inspired by an infinite God? Is it possible that the codes of China, India, Egypt, Greece and Rome were made by man, and that the laws recorded in the Pentateuch were alone given by God? Is it possible that and , , and , and , and all the poets of the world, and all their wondrous tragedies and songs are but the work of men, while no intelligence except the infinite God could be the author of the Pentateuch? Is it possible that of all the books that crowd the libraries of the world, the books of science, fiction, history and song, that all save only one, have been produced by man? Is it possible that of all these, the bible only is the work of God?
|
|
discoveries
progress
tragedy
libraries
poets
shakespeare
india
light
writer
fiction
books
inspiration
bible
science
songs
intelligence
alessandro-volta
benjamin-franklin
beranger
bonaventura-cavalieri
bonaventura-francesco-cavalieri
burns
cavalieri
chemistry
china
copernicus
descartes
euclid
experiments
franklin
fulton
galileo
galileo-galilei
galvani
gottfried-leibniz
gottfried-von-leibniz
gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz
gottfried-wilhelm-von-leibniz
greece
hydrostatics
inventions
isaac-newton
james-watt
johann-von-goethe
johannes-kepler
kepler
laws-of-motion
leibniz
luigi-aloisio-galvani
luigi-galvani
math
mathematics
morse
newton
nicolaus-copernicus
optics
pentateuch
pierre-jean-de-béranger
pioneers
pneumatics
rene-descartes
richard-trevithick
robert-burns
robert-fulton
rome
samuel-finley-breese-morse
samuel-morse
schiller
the-bible
theory-of-gravity
theory-of-universal-gravitation
trevethick
volta
watt
Æschylus
johann-wolfgang-von-goethe
goethe
egypt
william-shakespeare
|
Robert G. Ingersoll |
|
517f216
|
the golden eternity is { }
|
|
god
math
|
Jack Kerouac |
|
cdeeaa0
|
The universe is math on fire.
|
|
universe
theory
numbers
fire
math
|
Scott Westerfeld |
|
1ce8f99
|
"Why do you have such a crappy attitude about math?" "I don't. I have a crappy attitude about everything."
|
|
math
|
Laurie Halse Anderson |
|
8864002
|
The ocean is a Turing machine, the sand is its tape; the water reads the marks in the sand and sometimes erases them and sometimes carves new ones with tiny currents that are themselves a response to the marks.
|
|
humor
inspirational
ocean
math
|
Neal Stephenson |
|
aee1b72
|
I was always reading books when I should have been doing math and the rest of it.
|
|
reading
math
|
Markus Zusak |
|
3ccc32e
|
"However, as I hope to persuade you, there are some interesting connections between science and magic. They share a belief, as one mathematician put it, that what is visible is merely a superficial reality, not the underlying "real reality." They both have origins in a basic urge to make sense of a hostile world so that we may predict or manipulate it to our own ends." --
|
|
science
math
|
Roger Highfield |
|
72707a2
|
Like Moliere's M. Jourdain, who spoke prose all his life without knowing it, mathematicians have been reasoning for at least two millennia without being aware of all the principles underlying what they were doing. The real nature of the tools of their craft has become evident only within recent times A renaissance of logical studies in modern times begins with the publication in 1847 of George Boole's 'The Mathematical Analysis of Logic'.
|
|
nature
science
study
george-boole
jean-baptiste-poquelin
m-jourdain
molière
reasoning
logic
math
mathematics
|
Ernest Nagel |
|
606252a
|
The infinite! No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man; no other idea has so fruitfully stimulated his intellect; yet no other concept stands in greater need of clarification than that of the infinite.
|
|
world
infinity
intellect
question
math
|
Simon Singh |