How many pizzas are consumed each year in the United States? How many words have you spoken in your life? How many different peoples names appear in the New York Times each year? How many watermelons would fit inside the U.S. Capital building? What is the volume of all the human blood in the world?
John Allen PaulosMathematicians are a bit like the laconic Vermonter who, when asked if he's lived in the state his whole life, replies, "Not yet."
John Allen PaulosWe ourselves are co-called non-linear dynamical systems... I don't feel quite so pathetic when I interrupt a project to check on some obscure web site or newsgroup or derive an iota of cheer by getting rid of pocketful of change.
John Allen PaulosInnumeracy and pseudoscience are often associated, in part because of the ease with which mathematical certainty can be invoked, to bludgeon the innumerate into a dumb acquiescence.
John Allen Paulos