This must certainly be the quote of the week from English author Alan Bennett’s play Forty Years On:
Foster: I’m still a bit hazy about the Trinity, sir. Schoolmaster: Three in one, one in three, perfectly straightforward. Any doubts about that see your maths master.
The chessboard is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.
…[the reader] should not be discouraged, if on first reading of section 0, he finds that he does not have the prerequisites for reading the prerequisites.
Paul Halmos (1916 – 2006, Hungarian-born American mathematician
in Measure Theory (1950)
This is essentially the mathematician’s equivalent of the adage “Fake it ’til you make it.”
After the lecture I had the chance to meet him and chat, but the best part was the look on his face when I presented him my copy of Green Eggs and Ham for an autograph. He kindly obliged with the observation that he knew that “this” was coming eventually, but said that I was the first one to ask for a signature on this particular book.
He got his second opportunity just moments later when my freshman year roommate Gary showed up with his own copy. Who knew that we thought so much alike?
