Quotes About Math

There are two versions of math in the lives of many Americans: the strange and boring subject that they encountered in classrooms and an interesting set of ideas that is the math of the world, and is curiously different and surprisingly engaging. Our task is to introduce this second version to today's students, get them excited about math, and prepare them for the future.

Indeed, there is something to be said for the old math when taught by a poorly trained teacher. He can, at least, get across the fundamental rules of calculation without too much confusion. The same teacher trying to teach new math is apt to get across nothing at all.

[Harriet] hated math. She hated math with every bone in her body. She spent so much time hating it that she never had time to do it.

And by the same token, I appreciate math, because I can't do math. If I have to read a map or figure out the tip on a restaurant bill, I might start to tear up a little bit.

What if at school you had to take an 'art class' in which you were only taught how to paint a fence? What if you were never shown the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci and Picasso? Would that make you appreciate art? Would you want to learn more about it? I doubt it..........but this is how math is taught and so in the eyes of most of us it becomes the equivalent of watching paint dry. While the paintings of the great masters are readily available, the math of the great masters is locked away.

I take great solace that Einstein failed math. I failed math. I also failed English and home economics. Einstein was an underachiever.

President Obama said he plans on training 10,000 new math and science teachers. How about teaching math to that economic team of his?

We cheated on our math tests, we carved some dirty words on the desk.

I think math is a hugely creative field, because there are some very well-defined operations that you have to work within. You are, in a sense, straightjacketed by the rules of the mathematics. But within that constrained environment, it's up to you what you do with the symbols.

We have the industrial agriculturalists who try and make an argument that big is beautiful. But if you do the math, and particularly if you factor in that the price of oil is going to go through the roof, and so the price of transportation is going to go through the roof - making it abundantly clear that it's out of whack. The efficiency arguments are already crumbling, particularly if you actually include the cost of food pollution that these industries cause. They are tremendously unsustainable and tremendously inefficient.

It has been proven time and time again in countless studies that students who actively participate in arts education are twice as likely to read for pleasure, have strengthened problem-solving and critical thinking skills, are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement, four times more likely to participate in a math and science fair.

I can't stop biting my nails. It's a bad habit of mine. I like anything to do with math and numbers. I know a lot of people don't like geometry, but for me it's fun.

Every math curriculum in the world is based on the idea of hand-calculating, and most of what you're teaching is how to calculate. And I think the resistance to this is very variable.

I spent 10 years working on a math Ph.D., and I finally got kind of good at it.

I was very good in math and physics. In the Soviet time, we had a lot of Olympic-style competitions for different disciplines: I was always winning in my region.

Most people who open restaurants will fail, because they lack the fundamental understanding of restaurant math. Either they think they're superstar cooks or they think they're superstar hosts.

What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics, a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant. A theory appears to be beautiful or elegant (or simple, if you prefer) when it can be expressed concisely in terms of mathematics we already have. Symmetry exhibits the simplicity. The Foundamental Law is such that the different skins of the onion resemble one another and therefore the math for one skin allows you to express beautifully and simply the phenomenon of the next skin.

I'm real good with math, with numbers, like my dad was. I'm pretty much dialed in.

A lot of young girls don't realise how diverse the career opportunities are in games development. Many think that you need elite math skills and a vast knowledge of all things tech to work in games, and haven't thought about avenues like design, producing, art, writing or composing.

Each day millions of children arrive in American classrooms in search of more than reading and math skills. They are looking for a light in the darkness of their lives, a Good Samaritan who will stop and bandage a bruised heart or ego.

Look, I'm over 40, I'm single, and I work in musical theater - you do the math!

I saw the head of NOW - National Organization of Women - saying that women still only make 70 cents on the dollar to every man. I'm not sure I'm going to believe that. Women are notoriously bad at math.

At the fourth grade level, girls at the same percentages of boys say they're interested in careers in engineering or math or astrophysics, but by eighth grade that has dropped precipitously.

A great deal of our math, science, philosophy, and everyday behavior presupposes that stability and equilibria are the "default" states, and everything else involves some "perturbation." This is a mental model, a conceptual frame, a tacit belief, a presupposition - whatever you want to call it.

I have been involved with science and math education my whole life. My hope is to continue to promote the love of these beautiful disciplines to the next generation.

Everyone has the brainpower to follow the stock market. If you made it through fifth-grade math, you can do it.

I was dyslexic, so math and formulas were not necessarily my strong suit.

There is something very pleasing about the principles of science and the rules of math, because they are so inevitable and so harmonious - in the abstract, anyway.

The thing I want you especially to understand is this feeling of divine revelation. I feel that this structure was "out there" all along I just couldn't see it. And now I can! This is really what keeps me in the math game- the chance that I might glimpse some kind of secret underlying truth, some sort of message from the gods.

Silicon Valley, "the largest legal creation of wealth in history," was built largely by unprofessional amateurs using math, sand, and the institutions of freedom. The Soviet Union had the greatest mathematicians on earth, and plenty of sand, but without the institutions of freedom their brilliant mathematicians were not empowered to create those devices that are changing the world.

I guess the approach to song writing for me so far has been to use more chords and less math.

If you love math, have a knack for numbers, study hard and become a successful accountant; who cares if you can't draw a straight line or sing on key?

I'm always interested in understanding the math of things and understanding as much as I can about all aspects of business. And what I learn today may be useful to me two years from now. That's really the wonderful thing about investments is your knowledge is cumulative.

That is the inescapable math of tragedy and the multiplication of grief. Too many good people die a little when they lose someone they love. One death begets two or twenty or one hundred. It's the same all over the world.

I was always very strong in math, physics and calculus.

It's estimated that across Africa 100 elephants are killed for their tusks every day. It takes nothing more than simple math to get to what that adds up to in a year, and it's a distressing figure.

My mother was an economics professor. I'm proficient in math, and statistics, game theory, symbolic logic and all of that.

No one really buys records anymore. You can look at sales and do that math real quick. Unfortunately, it's fast food in the music industry. People don't ingest full records anymore.

Spending when the math's not there and the numbers aren't there and if they look in the social security trust fund, it's filled with IOUs because the government's been pilfering it for years on end. We have to do something. We have to start having this discussion.

Students need to decide, 'All right, well, does the height matter? Does the side of it matter? Does the color of the valve matter? What matters here?' - such an underrepresented question in math curriculum.

Look, this is a man, he's got great numbers. He talks about numbers. I'm beginning to think not only did he invent the Internet, but he invented the calculator. It's fuzzy math. It's a scaring - trying to scare people in the voting booth. Under my tax plan, that he continues to criticize, I set a third - the federal government should take no more than a third of anybody's check.

Children need far more than basic skills in reading, writing, and math, as important as those might be. Children also need to learn how to think for themselves, how to find meaning in what they learn, and how to work and live together.

The ultimate act of cowardice is the fat-headed wrestling guy sitting behind the frail kid in math class, clipping him on the ear, saying: 'What are you going to do about that, faggot?' That is cowardice. When the bullets start flying past that jock's saucer-shaped ears, that's not cowardice. That's payback.

Once you hit 40, you start reexamining the math of it all. I'll trade wisdom for youth any day.

The New York Times - but the whole country gives it that weight. It's like the Asian kid in math class. Everybody in the media cheats off The New York Times.

It's the usual Socialist fiscal math of 1 + 1 = You're paying, so who cares.

As a senior in high school my counselor recommended that I soften my science and math direction with an art course. Fortunately my high school offered a new course in B&W photography, so I opted for that instead of art, towards which I had an aversion. Composition is something that comes pretty naturally to me and I appreciate ordered chaos: the photo class turned out to be fun.

As a child it was clear to me that in some sense math was in the world around us. I became fascinated by what this means. When you look at the shape of the sun and the moon, they're circles, so every time you see a circular thing, there's pi embedded in it.