Algebra is like French Pastry: wonderful, but cannot be learned without putting one’s hands to the dough.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Random House)The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore, professore dottore Eco, what a library you have ! How many of these books have you read?” and the others - a very small minority - who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you don’t know as your financial means, mortgage rates and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menancingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.
If the Page satisfie not, inquire in the Margine:
…I hope that in addition there will be some readers who will simply take pleasure in a mathematical journey toward a high level of sophistication. There are many who would enjoy this trip, just as there are many who might enjoy listening to a symphony with a clear melodic line.
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
We had to prove the theorems ourselves—with hints, of course—and as a result didn’t get very far, covering perhaps a fourth of what might be done in a conventional lecture. But so what? The most persistent myth of mathematics education is that what is covered is the same as what is learned. We didn’t cover much, but we sure did learn.
To understand God’s thought, we must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose.
To put it saucily: information theory is something like the logarithm of probability theory. In early modern times the logarithm simplified multiplication into addition which was more accessible to calculation. Today, information theory transforms many quantities of probability theory into quantities which allow simpler bookkeeping.
More seriously, information theory is one of the most universal concepts with applications in computer science, mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry and other fields. It allows a lucid and transparent analysis of many systems and provides a framework to study and compare seemingly different systems using the same language and notions.
Not only a great quote, but an interesting way to view the subjects.
I have known more people whose lives have been ruined by getting a Ph.D. in physics than by drugs.
In the essay, Dr. Katz provides a bevy of solid reasons why one shouldn’t become a researcher. I highly recommend everyone read it and then carefully consider how we can turn these problems around.
Editor’s Note: The original article has since been moved to another server.
A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?
I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question — such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? — not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had.
What I do know is that there is a fundamental difference between science and politics. In fact, I’ve come to view them more and more as opposites.
In science, progress is possible.
Surely, God could have caused birds to fly with their bones made of solid gold, with their veins full of quicksilver, with their flesh heavier than lead, and with their wings exceedingly small. He did not, and that ought to show something. It is only in order to shield your ignorance that you put the Lord at every turn.
Suppose that we were asked to arrange the following in two categories–
distance, mass, electric force, entropy, beauty, melody.
I think there are the strongest grounds for placing entropy alongside beauty and melody and not with the first three.
One cool judgment is worth a dozen hasty councils. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat.
‘Should you just be an algebraist or a geometer?’ is like saying ‘Would you rather be deaf or blind?’
