A Quote by Marcus du Sautoy

You know, I'm not terribly fast at my times tables, because that's not what I think mathematics is about. — © Marcus du Sautoy
You know, I'm not terribly fast at my times tables, because that's not what I think mathematics is about.
I think the biggest misconception about mathematics is that everybody has to learn it. That seems to be a complete mistake. All the time worrying about pushing the children and getting them to be mathematically literate and all that stuff. It's terribly hard on the kids. It's also hard on the teachers. And I think it's totally useless. To me, mathematics is like playing the violin. Some people can do it - others can't. If you don't have it, then there's no point in pretending.
There have been numerous times when my career was supposed to be over because of mathematics, you know, age and numbers,' he says. 'How many times can you go platinum? How many times can you rap about the same subject? How many times can you say, 'Oakland?'
The original version of C did not have structures. So to make tables of objects, process tables and file tables and this tables and that tables, it really was fairly painful.
I couldn't care less about league tables. I'm more interested in kitchen tables and conference room tables.
I work with a lot of mathematicians, and one thing I notice about them is that they are not particularly fast with numbers; in fact some of them are rather slow. This is not a bad thing; they are slow because they think deeply and carefully about mathematics.
It seems that every practitioner of physics has had to wonder at some point why mathematics and physics have come to be so closely entwined. Opinions vary on the answer. ..Bertrand Russell acknowledged..'Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little.' ..Mathematics may be indispensable to physics, but it obviously does not constitute physics.
One of the great things about humor is, you can slip things past people with humor, you can use it as a sweetener. So you can actually tell them things, give them messages, get terribly, terribly serious and terribly, terribly dark, and because there are jokes in there, they'll go along with you, and they'll travel a lot further along with you than they would otherwise.
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.
You can keep counting forever. The answer is infinity. But, quite frankly, I don't think I ever liked it. I always found something repulsive about it. I prefer finite mathematics much more than infinite mathematics. I think that it is much more natural, much more appealing and the theory is much more beautiful. It is very concrete. It is something that you can touch and something you can feel and something to relate to. Infinity mathematics, to me, is something that is meaningless, because it is abstract nonsense.
Violence is so terribly fast . . . the most perverse thing about the movies is the way they portray it in slow motion, allowing it to be something sensuous . . . the viewer's lips slightly wet as the scene plays out. Violence is nothing like that. It is lightning fast, chaotic, and totally intangible.
Today, it is not only that our kings do not know mathematics, but our philosophers do not know mathematics and - to go a step further - our mathematicians do not know mathematics.
Life goes by so fast. It's really - and a lot of times things happen so fast you don't know - how should I react.
When I was going through those very fast changes, I think it was terribly important to me that I was seen to be inventive. I think that was the characteristic of my work that I wanted people to see.
I'm sorry to say that the subject I most disliked was mathematics. I have thought about it. I think the reason was that mathematics leaves no room for argument. If you made a mistake, that was all there was to it.
I'd say most qualifying sessions in the Chase are about the only times I get nervous, because qualifying is so important. A lot of times, when you're fast in practice, you have to live back up to those expectations in actual qualifying.
I think the hardest part of being in the band and trying to make it is waiting, you know? I think, to be fair, if we would have gotten a big break early on, it would have been wasted on us. All of that perseverance you often learn by failing. We went from barely being able to book anywhere to being nominated for Grammys. It's a snowball effect that happens to a lot of bands. I think the hardest part is having a side job: bussing tables, bartending, and waiting tables to make ends meet. Sometimes they are really worth doing, because one day things might actually work out in your favor.
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