Strogatz S Quotes & Sayings

In the early part of the ninth century, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a mathematician working in Baghdad, wrote a seminal textbook in which he highlighted the usefulness of restoring a quantity being subtracted (like 2, above) by adding it to the other side of an equation. He called this process al-jabr (Arabic for "restoring"), which later morphed into "algebra." Then, long after his death, he hit the etymological jackpot again. His own name, al-Khwarizmi, lives on today in the word "algorithm. — Steven H. Strogatz

One of the pleasures of looking at the world through mathematical eyes is that you can see certain patterns that would otherwise be hidden. — Steven Strogatz

I have one half of one half second to decide. — Rick Yancey

Yet in another way, calculus is fundamentally naive, almost childish in its optimism. Experience teaches us that change can be sudden, discontinuous, and wrenching. Calculus draws its power by refusing to see that. It insists on a world without accidents, where one thing leads logically to another. Give me the initial conditions and the law of motion, and with calculus I can predict the future -- or better yet, reconstruct the past. I wish I could do that now.
— Steven H. Strogatz

...nothing cements a friendship like hating the same person. — Steven Strogatz

businessmen learned quickly that working-class tourists had money to spend, too. What they lacked in sophistication they made up for in numbers. — Nelson Johnson

Good conversationalists make the person they are speaking to feel like the only person in the room. — Anonymous

If a man like Malcolm X could change and repudiate racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change, if young whites can change, then there is hope for America. — Eldridge Cleaver

You can get a certain amount of pleasure as a mathematical spectator, reading and watching some of the most beautiful arguments that have been created in the history of humanity. But that's too passive. — Steven Strogatz

It's a curious thing about human psychology that if you don't have the right mental framework, you sometimes can't see what's right in front of your face. — Steven H. Strogatz

let's begin with the word "vector." It comes from the Latin root vehere, "to carry," which also gives us words like "vehicle" and "conveyor belt." To an epidemiologist, a vector is the carrier of a pathogen, like the mosquito that conveys malaria to your bloodstream. To a mathematician, a vector (at least in its simplest form) is a step that carries you from one place to another. — Steven H. Strogatz

When you love a problem, its contours, obstacles and resistances are all just part of its character. — Steven Strogatz

Change is most sluggish at the extremes precisely because the derivative is zero there. — Steven Strogatz

Our aim is not merely to make the child understand, and still less to force him to memorize, but so to touch his imagination as to enthuse him to his innermost core. — Maria Montessori

The frequencies of the notes in a scale - do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do - sound to us like they're rising in equal steps. But objectively their vibrational frequencies are rising by equal multiples. We perceive pitch logarithmically. — Steven Strogatz

You don't have a face to work with, so your voice has to do all the work until you see the animation. So, a lot of it I had to pull back because it was too big. — Sean Hayes

I loved this smart, funny, big-hearted novel. As hilarious and wise as early Philip Roth, The Mathematician's Shiva will delight and move you. — Steven Strogatz

An artist doesn't really create anything - he just rearranges what is already there. — Paramahansa Yogananda

Under no stretch of imagination can war be regarded as an ethical process; yet war, force, terror, and propaganda were the evolutionary means employed to weld the German people into a tribal whole. — Arthur Keith

It is the story that we allow a Creator to write in our suffering that gives us the greatest opportunity to know the depths of His love, and in this way share that love with others. — Kayla Aimee

Looking at numbers as groups of rocks may seem unusual, but actually it's as old as math itself. The word "calculate" reflects that legacy - it comes from the Latin word calculus, meaning a pebble used for counting. To enjoy working with numbers you don't have to be Einstein (German for "one stone"), but it might help to have rocks in your head. — Steven Strogatz

When you create something new, you're breaking tradition - which is an act of defiance. — Steven Strogatz