Popular quotes about Math! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 39
I thought I was going to be a math major. My parents were both accountants and wanted me to major in business. Math was our compromise.
Michael SilverblattIndeed, 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.
Martin GardnerTo the extent math refers to reality, we are not certain to the extent we are certain, math does not refer to reality.
Albert EinsteinMy first feeling was that there was no way to continue. Writing isn't like math;in math, two plus two always equals four no matter what your mood is like. With writing, the way you feel changes everything.
Stephenie MeyerPresident Obama said he plans on training 10,000 new math and science teachers. How about teaching math to that economic team of his?
Jay LenoI 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.
Brian GreeneMy character, Taylor McKessie, is a little bit brighter in the math and science department than I am... okay, a lot.
Monique ColemanSo, if I'm no cheerleader of sports, why write a chapter about it? Sports do have some positive impact on society. They solve problems, such as how to get inner-city kids to spend $175 on shoes. They serve as a backdrop for some of our most memorable commercials. And they remain the one and only relevant application of math. Not only that, but we have sports to thank for most of the last century's advances in manliness. The system starts in school, where gym class separates the men from the boys. Then those men are taught to be winners, or at least, losers that hate themselves.
Stephen ColbertIt 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.
Quincy JonesI went home every night to New Jersey - or most nights - and to help with the six-grade math homework or to make breakfast in the morning, just to make sure that that was there. When I was single and didn't have children, I used to laugh at this notion of quality time.
Kellyanne ConwayAmerica ranks 21st when it comes to math education. We rank 25th when it comes to science. We used to be number one in the proportion of college graduates. We now rank ninth. And at an age where knowledge, skills, are the determinant of how successful we're going to be, unless we reverse that we're going to keep slipping behind economically to a lot of other countries.
Barack ObamaI 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.
Oleg DeripaskaScientific research and other studies have demonstrated that arts education can enhance American students' math and language skills and improve test scores which in turn increase chances of higher education and good jobs in the future.
Thad CochranOnce you understand that there's a spiritual math, add soul to the science and subtract the riff-raff. 24-7-365, cause 9 to 5 ain't alive.
Kool Moe DeeYou know when you're a kid and you think, 'Oh no, I've got double math, this is never gonna end,' but then it ends, and it's like it never happened? That's like life.
Craig FergusonI exclusively attended public school... And I can honestly say that on the day of my graduation, if you had given me a pop quiz on history, science, or math, I would have in no way been able to pass it - despite the fact that I completely understood it at the time that it had been 'taught' to me, and had even made a good 'grade' on it.
Jessica BowmanIf present trends continue, our country may soon find itself far behind many other nations in both science and technology nations where, if you inform strangers that you are a mathematician, they respond with admiration and not by telling you how much they hated math in school, and how they sure could use you to balance their checkbooks.
Martin GardnerAin't all buttons and charts, little albatross. Know what the first rule of flying is? Well I s'pose you do, since you already know what I'm 'bout to say. I do. But I like to hear you say it. Love. Can know all the math in the 'verse but take a boat in the air that you don't love? She'll shake you off just as sure as a turn in the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home.
Joss WhedonThe basic skills of math, English and writing are not enough, ... You must develop a basic system of values to form and guide the use of these skills. The true test will not be what you learned in college, but how you used what you learned.
Jim RogersThere are people at the extremes who aren't able to do anything musically, and then others sort of fall in the middle. And the same thing with math, and the same thing with art. You'll find people who are geniuses, or prodigies at the far end of the bell shaped curve, and I think you will find some of the acquired savants in that category who happened to have been endowed with that kind of talent, which explains why not everyone becomes an acquired savant.
Darold TreffertI am encouraged as I look at some of those who have listened to their "different drum": Einstein was hopeless at school math and commented wryly on his inadequacy in human relations. Winston Churchill was an abysmal failure in his early school years. Byron, that revolutionary student, had to compensate for a club foot; Demosthenes for a stutter; and Homer was blind. Socrates couldn't manage his wife, and infuriated his countrymen. And what about Jesus, if we need an ultimate example of failure with one's peers? Or an ultimate example of love?
Madeleine L'EngleAnd they're also very good at math, these super boogers, and so they teach Billy the ways of mathematics.
William JoyceWhen I went to Afghanistan in 2003, I walked into a war zone. Entire neighborhoods had been demolished. There were an overwhelming number of widows and orphans and people who had been physically and emotionally damaged; every 10-year-old kid on the street knew how to dismantle a Kalashnikov in under a minute. I would flip through math textbooks intended for third grade, fourth grade, and they would include word problems such as, "If you have 100 grenades and 20 mujahideen, how many grenades per mujahideen do you get?" War has infiltrated every facet of life.
Khaled HosseiniI'd like to be able to do complex math in my head. Any kind of adversity and I become very anxious, but if you're a robot, you have good equilibrium. I wish I was cooler under pressure, like a robot.
Zach WoodsCollege was an experience I'll always cherish. Now I fund a scholarship at my alma mater in my late father's name-he'd laugh to know that it's a science scholarship, when I can barely do math! I also fund a nursing scholarship at the Oglala Lakota College in Kyle, South Dakota, in the name of my mother, who was a nurse.
Diana PalmerAt first, when California started winning its water lawsuits and shutting off cities, the displaced people just followed the water-right to California. It took a little while before the bureaucrats realized what was going on, but finally someone with a sharp pencil did the math and realized that taking in people along with their water didn't solve a water shortage.
Paolo BacigalupiI think there's no way they should have to teach [math] now. We have computers. We no longer need to know why 3x = 2y/4.
Rosie O'DonnellThe interaction between math and physics is a two-way process, with each of the two subjects drawing from and inspiring the other. At different times, one of them may take the lead in developing a particular idea, only to yield to the other subject as focus shifts. But altogether, the two interact in a virtuous circle of mutual influence.
Edward FrenkelWe met [with Massimo Pupillo] many years ago in the halcyon days of the underground avant-prog math-rock scene when I was playing in Guapo.
Daniel O'SullivanEnvironment-based education produces student gains in social studies, science, language arts, and math; improves standardized test scores and grade-point averages; and develops skills in problem-solving, critical thinking, and decision-making.
Richard LouvToday, over half of China's undergraduate degrees are in math, science technology and engineering, yet only 16 percent of America's undergraduates pursue these schools.
Cathy McMorris RodgersWhen I cook with my son, I might chop vegetables and have fun with different shapes. Cooking is a way to teach kids about other things, like reading or math with all of the weights and measures. There are so many things that are part of cooking that are also very educational.
Emeril LagassePeople want sex education out of the schools. They believe sex education causes promiscuity. Hey, I took algebra, but I never do math.
Elayne BooslerI'm not good at math. Numbers are a terrifying thing to me. My father is a whiz with money and the stock market, and he tries to explain it to me, and I find it terrifying.
Chris GethardMy background is basically scientific math. My Dad was a physicist, so I have it in my blood somewhere. Scientific method is very important to me. I think anything that contradicts it is probably not true.
John AstinThe 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.
Doug StanhopeActivism is setting a goal of something you would like to be different, and figuring out what would have to change to achieve that goal. It's sort of like math.
Rachel MaddowI was good at math and science, and I got lots of degrees in lots of things, but in a parallel universe, I probably became a chef.
Nathan MyhrvoldI used to be jealous; I'm not jealous anymore. And a miracle happened to me, because if you're jealous, it's a cancer, it's a plague on your spirit, it really is. And I actually cured jealousy in a very weird way - I cured it with mathematics. And I'm not a math person at all, but I've been with my wife for about seven years, so we have had sex probably, I'd like to think, like, 9 million times or, at least, 1,500. So, the way I figured it, if she goes out and screws some other guy once - I'm still winning.
Marc MaronPeople expect the math to be simplified, but I want to surprise them right from the start. When the brain gets lost, it doesn't stop working. It tries to makes sense of things. It begins to speculate and guess, and that's when things open up. That's exciting.
Simon McBurneyI was very disruptive. I was horrible. I didn't learn like all the other kids. I had to sometimes take my tests out in the hallways because I couldn't focus. But, my teachers would come see me in the plays and were like "I don't understand how you can focus and be in the moment in a play and you go into math class and you can't focus."
Eliza Coupe