A Quote by Richard Hamming

It is better to do the right problem the wrong way than the wrong problem the right way.

Richard Hamming

Quote Topics

Better Problem Right Right Way Than Way Wrong Wrong Way

Quote Author

Richard Hamming
American - Mathematician
February 11, 1915 - January 7, 1998

Successful problem solving requires finding the right solution to the right problem. We fail more often because we solve the wrong problem than because we get the wrong solution to the right problem.

Russell L. Ackoff

It's better to solve the right problem approximately than to solve the wrong problem exactly.

John Tukey

Something is amiss, deeply wrong, something is deeply wrong with the way we're living our lives collectively, with the way we are creating our collective experience on earth. And we are coming to the conclusion that the problem after all is not political, that the problem after all is not economic, that the problem after all cannot be solved with bombs or missiles or bullets, but that the problem in fact is spiritual, that the problem with the world today is as it has always been, a problem of our most basic beliefs. Without a doubt it`s a spiritual awakening and a spiritual revolution.

Neale Donald Walsch

A desperation to escape a problem is the wrong way. A passion to understand it is the right way

Vernon Howard

The manager who comes up with the right solution to the wrong problem is more dangerous than the manager who comes up with the wrong solution to the right problem.

Peter Drucker

Instead of making others right or wrong, or bottling up right and wrong in ourselves, there's a middle way, a very powerful middle way...... Could we have no agenda when we walk into a room with another person, not know what to say, not make that person wrong or right? Could we see, hear, feel other people as they really are? It is powerful to practice this way..... true communication can happen only in that open space.

Pema Chodron

Even if you tell yourself "Today I'm going to drink coffee the wrong way ... from a dirty boot." Even that would be right, because you chose to drink coffee from that boot. Because you can do nothing wrong. You are always right. Even when you say, "I'm such an idiot, I'm so wrong..." you're right. You're right about being wrong. You're right even when you're an idiot. No matter how stupid your idea, you're doomed to be right because it's yours.

Chuck Palahniuk

Life is a problem; mortal man was made to solve the solemn problem right or wrong.

John Quincy Adams

Third-person camera is way harder than I even imagined it could be. It is the hardest problem in video game development. Everybody gets it wrong. It's just a question of how close to right do you get it.

Warren Spector

I have no way of knowing whether or not you married the wrong person. But I do know that if you treat the wrong person like the right person, you could well end up having married the right person after all. It is far more important to BE the right kind of person than it is to marry the right person.

Zig Ziglar

I wrote it the right way, so it was copied the wrong way right. I mean the right way wrong.

Eugene Ormandy

The best traders are not right more than they are wrong. They are quick adjusters. They are better at getting right when they are wrong.

Lloyd Blankfein

When you are solving a difficult problem re-ask the problem so that your solution helps you learn faster. Find a faster way to fail, recover, and try again. If the problem you are trying to solve involves creating a magnum opus, you are solving the wrong problem.

Aza Raskin

What interest, zest, or excitement can there be in achieving the right way, unless we are enabled to feel that the wrong way is also a possible and a natural way, nay, more, a menacing and an imminent way? And what sense can there be in condemning ourselves for taking the wrong way, unless we need have done nothing of the sort, unless the right way was open to us as well? I cannot understand the willingness to act, no matter how we feel, without the belief that acts are really good and bad.

William James

Mistakes are at the very base of human thought, embedded there, feeding the structure like root nodules. If we were not provided with the knack for being wrong, we could never get anything useful done. We think our way along by choosing between right and wrong alternatives, and the wrong choices have to be made as often as the right ones. We get along in life this way.