A Quote by Danica McKellar
One of the most amazing things about mathematics is the people who do math aren't usually interested in application, because mathematics itself is truly a beautiful art form. It's structures and patterns, and that's what we love, and that's what we get off on.
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
I don't think that everyone should become a mathematician, but I do believe that many students don't give mathematics a real chance. I did poorly in math for a couple of years in middle school; I was just not interested in thinking about it. I can see that without being excited mathematics can look pointless and cold. The beauty of mathematics only shows itself to more patient followers.
I don't want to convince you that mathematics is useful. It is, but utility is not the only criterion for value to humanity. Above all, I want to convince you that mathematics is beautiful, surprising, enjoyable, and interesting. In fact, mathematics is the closest that we humans get to true magic. How else to describe the patterns in our heads that - by some mysterious agency - capture patterns of the universe around us? Mathematics connects ideas that otherwise seem totally unrelated, revealing deep similarities that subsequently show up in nature.
I like science and mathematics. When I say mathematics, I don't mean algebra or math in that sense, but the mathematics of things.
Though the structures and patterns of mathematics reflect the structure of, and resonate in, the human mind every bit as much as do the structures and patterns of music, human beings have developed no mathematical equivalent to a pair of ears. Mathematics can only be "seen" with the "eyes of the mind". It is as if we had no sense of hearing, so that only someone able to sight read music would be able to appreciate its patterns and harmonies.
In fact, the answer to the question "What is mathematics?" has changed several times during the course of history... It was only in the last twenty years or so that a definition of mathematics emerged on which most mathematicians agree: mathematics is the science of patterns.
Most people have some appreciation of mathematics, just as most people can enjoy a pleasant tune; and there are probably more people really interested in mathematics than in music. Appearances suggest the contrary, but there are easy explanations. Music can be used to stimulate mass emotion, while mathematics cannot; and musical incapacity is recognized (no doubt rightly) as mildly discreditable, whereas most people are so frightened of the name of mathematics that they are ready, quite unaffectedly, to exaggerate their own mathematical stupidity
Mystery is an inescapable ingredient of mathematics. Mathematics is full of unanswered questions, which far outnumber known theorems and results. It's the nature of mathematics to pose more problems than it can solve. Indeed, mathematics itself may be built on small islands of truth comprising the pieces of mathematics that can be validated by relatively short proofs. All else is speculation.
To criticize mathematics for its abstraction is to miss the point entirely. Abstraction is what makes mathematics work. If you concentrate too closely on too limited an application of a mathematical idea, you rob the mathematician of his most important tools: analogy, generality, and simplicity. Mathematics is the ultimate in technology transfer.
If you ask ... the man in the street ... the human significance of mathematics, the answer of the world will be, that mathematics has given mankind a metrical and computatory art essential to the effective conduct of daily life, that mathematics admits of countless applications in engineering and the natural sciences, and finally that mathematics is a most excellent instrumentality for giving mental discipline... [A mathematician will add] that mathematics is the exact science, the science of exact thought or of rigorous thinking.
Mathematics is often defined as the science of space and number . . . it was not until the recent resonance of computers and mathematics that a more apt definition became fully evident: mathematics is the science of patterns.
One may say that mathematics talks about the things which are of no concern to men. Mathematics has the inhuman quality of starlight - brilliant, sharp but cold ... thus we are clearest where knowledge matters least: in mathematics, especially number theory.
The world is colors and motion, feelings and thoughts and what does math have to do with it? Not much, if 'math' means being bored in high school, but in truth mathematics is the one universal science. Mathematics is the study of pure pattern and everything in the cosmos is a kind of pattern.
Mathematics has two faces: it is the rigorous science of Euclid, but it is also something else. Mathematics presented in the Euclidean way appears as a systematic, deductive science; but mathematics in the making appears as an experimental, inductive science. Both aspects are as old as the science of mathematics itself.
Some people think that mathematics is a serious business that must always be cold and dry; but we think mathematics is fun, and we aren't ashamed to admit the fact. Why should a strict boundary line be drawn between work and play? Concrete mathematics is full of appealing patterns; the manipulations are not always easy, but the answers can be astonishingly attractive.
A surprising proportion of mathematicians are accomplished musicians. Is it because music and mathematics share patterns that are beautiful?
It is impossible to overstate the imporance of problems in mathematics. It is by means of problems that mathematics develops and actually lifts itself by its own bootstraps... Every new discovery in mathematics, results from an attempt to solve some problem.
Related Authors
Angelina Jolie Quotes
American
Actress
Carrie Fisher Quotes
American
Actress
Cate Blanchett Quotes
Australian
Actress
Drew Barrymore Quotes
American
Actress
Emma Watson Quotes
British
Actress
Jane Fonda Quotes
American
Actress
Jennifer Aniston Quotes
American
Actress
Kate Winslet Quotes
English
Actress
Kristen Stewart Quotes
American
Actress
Lena Dunham Quotes
American
Actress
Marilyn Monroe Quotes
American
Actress
Meryl Streep Quotes
American
Actress
Mindy Kaling Quotes
American
Actress
Sandra Bullock Quotes
American
Actress
Selena Gomez Quotes
American
Actress
Viola Davis Quotes
American
Actress