Mental Arithmetic Quotes & Sayings

The desire to economize time and mental effort in arithmetical computations, and to eliminate human liability to error is probably as old as the science of arithmetic itself. — Howard Aiken

Such was the mistrust of the official line, so heavy was the spin, that with any new piece of information you learned to do a kind of mental arithmetic whereby you divided the information given by the speaker's rank, multiplied by his or her time in-country, and subtracted based on the number of miles the speaker was distant from the fighting.

From The Big Suck: Notes from the Jarhead Underground — David J. Morris

Imagine what you are writing about. See it and live it. Do not think it up laboriously, as if you were working out mental arithmetic. Just look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to it, turn yourself into it. When you do this, the words look after themselves, like magic. — Ted Hughes

I do know the sorrow of being ordinary, and that much of our life is spent doing the crazy mental arithmetic of how, at any given moment, we might improve, or at least disguise or present our defects and screw-ups in either more charming or more intimidating ways. — Anne Lamott

That arithmetic is the basest of all mental activities is proved by the fact that it is the only one that can be accomplished by a machine. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Bill Frindall has done a bit of mental arithmetic with a calculator — John Arlott

Did a swift burst of mental arithmetic, arrived at an answer he liked and — Douglas Adams

The second simultaneous thing Reacher was doing was playing around with a little mental arithmetic. He was multiplying big numbers in his head. He was thirty-seven years and eight months old, just about to the day. Thirty-seven multiplied by three hundred and sixty-five was thirteen thousand five hundred and five. Plus twelve days for twelve leap years was thirteen thousand five hundred and seventeen. Eight months counting from his birthday in October forward to this date in June was two hundred and forty-three days. Total of thirteen thousand seven hundred and sixty days since he was born. Thirteen thousand seven hundred and sixty days, thirteen thousand seven hundred and sixty nights. He was trying to place this particular night somewhere on that endless scale. In terms of how bad it was. Truth was, it wasn't the best night he had ever passed, but it was a long way from being the worst. A very long way. — Lee Child