Mathematical Proof Quotes

On this page you will find all the quotes on the topic "Mathematical Proof". There are currently 36 quotes in our collection about Mathematical Proof. Discover the TOP 10 sayings about Mathematical Proof!
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  • I read in the proof sheets of Hardy on Ramanujan: "As someone said, each of the positive integers was one of his personal friends." My reaction was, "I wonder who said that; I wish I had." In the next proof-sheets I read (what now stands), "It was Littlewood who said..."

    Friendship   Math   Wish  
    John Edensor Littlewood, Béla Bollobás (1986). “Littlewood's Miscellany”, p.61, Cambridge University Press
  • We often hear that mathematics consists mainly of "proving theorems." Is a writer's job mainly that of "writing sentences?"

    Jobs   Writing   Math  
  • Mathematics consists in proving the most obvious thing in the least obvious way.

    George Pólya (1968). “Mathematical discovery: on understanding, learning, and teaching problem solving”
  • In a way, composing on the melodic level is an expression of a melodic truth, almost like a geometric truth. If it has clarity, other people will recognize it. There's no way of isolating it in a gallery on a white wall and saying, "This is a work of art. This is a mathematical proof."

    Art   Wall   Expression  
    Source: pitchfork.com
  • A proof tells us where to concentrate our doubts.

    Math   Doubt   Proof  
    Morris Kline (1964). “Mathematics in Western Culture”, p.478, Oxford University Press
  • Mathematics is not a deductive science - that's a cliché. When you try to prove a theorem, you don't just list the hypotheses, and then start to reason. What you do is trial and error, experimentation, guesswork.

    Math   Science   Errors  
    "I Want to be a Mathematician: An Automathography". Book by Paul Halmos, 1985.
  • As far as I know, Clifford Pickover is the first mathematician to write a book about areas where math and theology overlap. Are there mathematical proofs of God? Who are the great mathematicians who believed in a deity? Does numerology lead anywhere when applied to sacred literature? Pickover covers these and many other off-trail topics with his usual verve, humor, and clarity. And along the way the reader will learn a great deal of serious mathematics.

    Book   Writing   Math  
  • A mathematical proof must be perspicuous.

    Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe, Rush Rhees, Georg Henrik Wright (1967). “Remarks on the foundations of mathematics”
  • There was, I think, a feeling that the best science was that done in the simplest way. In experimental work, as in mathematics, there was "style" and a result obtained with simple equipment was more elegant than one obtained with complicated apparatus, just as a mathematical proof derived neatly was better than one involving laborious calculations. Rutherford's first disintegration experiment, and Chadwick's discovery of the neutron had a "style" that is different from that of experiments made with giant accelerators.

  • To divide a cube into two other cubes, a fourth power, or in general any power whatever into two powers of the same denomination above the second is impossible, and I have assuredly found an admirable proof of this, but the margin is too narrow to contain it.

    Math   Science   Power  
    Scribbled note in the margins of his copy of Diophantus's Arithmetica. He did not live to provide the promised proof, and the conjecture became famous as Fermat's Last Theorem. In 1993 Andrew Wiles, a British mathematician, claimed to have discovered the proof.
  • When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it.

    Math   Science   Numbers  
    Popular Lectures and Addresses "Electrical Units of Measurement" (1889).
  • Besides it is an error to believe that rigour is the enemy of simplicity. On the contrary we find it confirmed by numerous examples that the rigorous method is at the same time the simpler and the more easily comprehended. The very effort for rigor forces us to find out simpler methods of proof.

    Believe   Math   Errors  
  • A witty statesman said, you might prove anything by figures.

    Witty   Math   Science  
    Chartism ch. 2 (1839) See Disraeli 38
  • I mean the word proof not in the sense of the lawyers, who set two half proofs equal to a whole one, but in the sense of a mathematician, where half proof = 0, and it is demanded for proof that every doubt becomes impossible.

    Mean   Math   Two  
    Letter to Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers on May 14, 1826. "Calculus Gems". Book by George F. Simmons, 1992.
  • Nothing has afforded me so convincing a proof of the unity of the Deity as these purely mental conceptions of numerical and mathematical science.

    Math   Unity   Deities  
    Kathryn A. Neeley, Mary Somerville (2001). “Mary Somerville: Science, Illumination, and the Female Mind”, p.180, Cambridge University Press
  • A modern mathematical proof is not very different from a modern machine, or a modern test setup: the simple fundamental principles are hidden and almost invisible under a mass of technical details.

    Hermann Weyl (2013). “Levels of Infinity: Selected Writings on Mathematics and Philosophy”, p.33, Courier Corporation
  • Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions.

    Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 23-24, (p. 161), 1949.
  • Don't just read it; fight it! Ask your own question, look for your own examples, discover your own proofs. Is the hypothesis necessary? Is the converse true? ... Where does the proof use the hypothesis?

    Fighting   Example   Doe  
    "I Want to be a Mathematician: An Automathography". Book by Paul Halmos, 1985.
  • Poverty is a mathematical proof of the fact that mankind is a big failure!

    Poverty   Facts   Proof  
  • No human investigation can claim to be scientific if it doesn't pass the test of mathematical proof.

    Ontology   Tests   Logic  
  • Absence of proof is not proof of absence.

  • I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.

    Time   Math   Science  
    "The Mind and the Eye: A Study of the Biologist's Standpoint". Book by A. Arber, 1954.
  • Mathematics is the most exact science, and its conclusions are capable of absolute proof. But this is so only because mathematics does not attempt to draw absolute conclusions. All mathematical truths are relative, conditional. In E. T. Bell Men of Mathematics, New York: Simona and Schuster, 1937.

    New York   Science   Men  
  • Mathematical proofs, like diamonds, are hard and clear, and will be touched with nothing but strict reasoning.

    Math   Proof   Diamond  
  • Mathematics is not a deductive science - that's a cliché... What you do is trial and error, experimentation, guesswork.

    "I Want to be a Mathematician: An Automathography". Book by Paul Halmos, 1985.
  • Geometry enlightens the intellect and sets one's mind right. All of its proofs are very clear and orderly. It is hardly possible for errors to enter into geometrical reasoning, because it is well arranged and orderly. Thus, the mind that constantly applies itself to geometry is not likely to fall into error. In this convenient way, the person who knows geometry acquires intelligence.

    Fall   Math   Errors  
  • What a mathematical proof actually does is show that certain conclusions, such as the irrationality of , follow from certain premises, such as the principle of mathematical induction. The validity of these premises is an entirely independent matter which can safely be left to philosophers.

    Timothy Gowers (2010). “Mathematics”, p.50, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.
  • It is my experience that proofs involving matrices can be shortened by 50% if one throws the matrices out.

    Emil Artin (2016). “Geometric Algebra”, p.14, Courier Dover Publications
  • A mathematician's reputation rests on the number of bad proofs he has given.

  • About Thomas Hobbes: He was 40 years old before he looked on geometry; which happened accidentally. Being in a gentleman's library, Euclid's Elements lay open, and "twas the 47 El. libri I" [Pythagoras' Theorem]. He read the proposition "By God", sayd he, "this is impossible:" So he reads the demonstration of it, which referred him back to such a proposition; which proposition he read. That referred him back to another, which he also read. Et sic deinceps, that at last he was demonstratively convinced of that truth. This made him in love with geometry.

    Love   Truth   Years  
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