The linear-programming was - and is - perhaps the single most important real-life problem.

I've never met Hans Rosling, but I just knew him through his many YouTube videos, and they were absolute dynamite.

There can be very little of present-day science and technology that is not dependent on complex numbers in one way or another.

Just as music comes alive in the performance of it, the same is true of mathematics. The symbols on the page have no more to do with mathematics than the notes on a page of music. They simply represent the experience.

A PhD in Mathematics is three years of guessing it wrong, plus one week of getting it right and writing a dissertation.

I firmly believe that mathematics does not exist outside of humans. It is something we, as a species, invent.

Outside observers often assume that the more complicted a piece of mathematics is, the more mathematicians admire it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mathematicians admire elegance and simplicity above all else, and the ultimate goal in solving a problem is to find the method that does the job in the most efficient manner. Though the major accolades are given to the individual who solves a particular problem first, credit (and gratitude) always goes to those who subsequently find a simpler solution.