47 Quotes by Jordan Ellenberg

We tend to teach mathematics as a long list of rules.You learn them in order and you have to obey them, because if you don't obey them you get a C-.This is not mathematics. Mathematics is the study if things that come out a certain way because there is no other way they could possibly be.

I think we need more math majors who don't become mathematicians. More math major doctors, more math major high school teachers, more math major CEOs, more math major senators. But we won't get there unless we dump the stereotype that math is only worthwhile for kid geniuses.

Dividing one number by another is mere computation ; knowing what to divide by what is mathematics.

Недостатньо того, щоб дані узгоджувалися з вашою теорією; вони мусять не узгоджуватися із запереченням вашої теорії

You can't write a sonnet if you have to look up the spelling of each word as you go.

One thing the American defense establishment has traditionally understood very well is that countries don't win wars just by being braver than the other side, or freer, or slightly preferred by God. The winners are usually the guys who get 5% fewer of their planes shot down, or use 5% less fuel, or get 5% more nutrition into their infantry at 95% of the cost.

Improbability, as described here, is a relative notion, not an absolute one; when we say an outcome is improbable, we are always saying, explicitly or not, that it is improbable under some set of hypotheses we've made about the underling mechanisms of the world.

Math, like meditation, puts you in direct contact with the universe, which is bigger than you, was here before you, and will be here after you.

In the Bayesian framework, how much you believe something after you see the evidence depends not just on what the evidence shows, but on how much you believed it to begin with.