A Quote by John Herschel

Almost all the greatest discoveries in astronomy have resulted from what we have elsewhere termed Residual Phenomena, of a qualitative or numerical kind, of such portions of the numerical or quantitative results of observation as remain outstanding and unaccounted for, after subducting and allowing for all that would result from the strict application of known principles.

John Herschel

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After Allowing Almost Almost All Application Astronomy Discoveries Elsewhere Greatest Kind Known Numerical Observation Outstanding Phenomena Portions Principles Qualitative Quantitative Remain Residual Result Results Strict Would

Quote Author

John Herschel
English - Celebrity
March 7, 1792 - May 11, 1871

Many persons who are not conversant with mathematical studies imagine that because the business of [Babbage’s Analytical Engine] is to give its results in numerical notation, the nature of its processes must consequently be arithmetical and numerical, rather than algebraical and analytical. This is an error. The engine can arrange and combine its numerical quantities exactly as if they were letters or any other general symbols; and in fact it might bring out its results in algebraical notation, were provisions made accordingly.

Ada Lovelace

The calculative exactness of practical life which the money economy has brought about corresponds to the ideal of natural science: to transform the world by mathematical formulas. Only money economy has filled the days of so many people with weighing, calculating, with numerical determinations, with a reduction of qualitative values to quantitative ones.

Georg Simmel

Mother Teresa's numerical results were not her greatest contribution. Instead, she made the world-and especially India-conscious of compassion.

Peter Drucker

What I tend to do is blend quantitative with the qualitative to allow me to plot the qualitative data in some way. It's a question of what quantitative data are most applicable. So I'm playing with that, merging the two.

David McCandless

Surprise becomes effective when we suddenly face the enemy at one point with far more troops than he expected. This type of numerical superiority is quite distinct from numerical superiority in general: it is the most powerful medium in the art of war.

Carl von Clausewitz

Accurate and minute measurement seems to the non-scientific imagination, a less lofty and dignified work than looking for something new. But nearly all the grandest discoveries of science have been but the rewards of accurate measurement and patient long-continued labour in the minute sifting of numerical results.

Lord Kelvin

The equations at which we arrive must be such that a person of any nation, by substituting the numerical values of the quantities as measured by his own national units, would obtain a true result.

James Clerk Maxwell

Anyway that's a large part of what economics is - people arbitrarily, or as a matter of taste, assigning numerical values to non-numerical things. And then pretending that they haven't just made the numbers up, which they have. Economics is like astrology in that sense, except that economics serves to justify the current power structure, and so it has a lot of fervent believers among the powerful

Kim Stanley Robinson

I had made considerable advance ... in calculations on my favourite numerical lunar theory, when I discovered that, under the heavy pressure of unusual matters (two transits of Venus and some eclipses) I had committed a grievous error in the first stage of giving numerical value to my theory. My spirit in the work was broken, and I have never heartily proceeded with it since.

George Biddell Airy

It has been my experience that competency in mathematics, both in numerical manipulations and in understanding its conceptual foundations, enhances a person's ability to handle the more ambiguous and qualitative relationships that dominate our day-to-day financial decision-making

Alan Greenspan

If [the Conservatives] lose, we say, "Okay, we gotta change. We gotta improve, come back and win the next election." They [leftists] don't. When they lose and even when they win, because they know that they're in a numerical minority. But that numerical minority is a vast majority of pop culture and education environments. And so they just bully their way.

Rush Limbaugh

The outstanding feature, however, is the possibility that the velocity-distance relation may represent the de Sitter effect, and hence that numerical data may be introduced into discussions of the general curvature of space.

Edwin Powell Hubble

Econometrics may be defined as the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on the concurrent development of theory and observation, related by appropriate methods of inference.

Paul Samuelson

Defendants are being evaluated based on numerical grid without any aggravating circumstances being considered. The effect has been to transfer the disparity from the judge to the prosecutor allowing for a great deal of leeway on indictments.

Harold H. Greene

In the United States, as elsewhere, there are, and have always been, two parties in politics ... It is remarkable how nearly their positive statements of political doctrine agree, while they differ in almost every possible application of their common principles.