Quotes About Number Theory

#1. At a purely formal level, one could call probability theory the study of measure spaces with total measure one, but that would be like calling number theory the study of strings of digits which terminate.

Terence Tao

#2. I chose to deal with the science of cryptography. Cryptography began in mathematics. Codes were developed, even from Caesar's time, based on number theory and mathematical principles. I decided to use those principles and designed a work that is encoded.

James Sanborn

#3. Cryptography has generated number theory, algebraic geometry over finite fields, algebra, combinatorics and computers.

Vladimir Arnold

#4. Cardinal Arithmetics is much older than Number Theory. People used to exchange things way before there were numbers. Expressing numbers like 762 is already a sign of a very advanced civilization.

Saharon Shelah

#5. One may say that mathematics talks about the things which are of no concern to men. Mathematics has the inhuman quality of starlight - brilliant, sharp but cold ... thus we are clearest where knowledge matters least: in mathematics, especially number theory.

Hermann Weyl

#6. Topology and number theory are my faves.

Janna Levin

#7. Music is part of Number Theory. Nowadays when a number-theorist applies for a grant, he says that it is good for security, but in those days, way before America, he would say that it's good for music. I will not comment whether we have progressed ...

Hendrik Lenstra

#8. Number theorists say that number theory is too complicated, so let's pretend that there is only one prime number, and then let's combine all these results. Surprisingly, sometimes it works.

Saharon Shelah

#9. The only goal of science is the honour of the human spirit, and a question in number theory is worth a question concerning the system of the world.

Serge Lang

#10. Recreational number theory [ ... ] is that part of number theory that is too difficult to study.

Hendrik Lenstra

#11. Two centuries ago Carl Friedrich Gauss, one of the greatest mathematicians and a founder of number theory, described his brainchild as "the queen of mathematics." Queens are regal, but they are also largely decorative, and this nuance was not lost on Gauss.

Ian Stewart

#12. Egoism holds, therefore, is that each man's happiness is the sole good--that a number of different things are each of them the only good thing there is--an absolute contradiction! No more complete and thorough refutation of any theory could be desired.

G.E. Moore

#13. No number of sightings of white swans can prove the theory that all swans are white. The sighting of just one black one may disprove it.

Karl Popper

#14. Filibusters should require 35 senators to ... make a commitment to continually debate an issue in reality, not just in theory. The number of votes needed to overcome a filibuster should be reduced to 55 from 60.

Evan Bayh

#15. The usefulness of the models in constructing a testable theory of the process is severely limited by the quickly increasing number of parameters which must be estimated in order to compare the predictions of the models with empirical results.

Anatol Rapoport

#16. In the 19th century, smallpox was widely considered a disease of filth, which meant that it was largely understood to be a disease of the poor. According to filth theory, any number of contagious diseases were caused by bad air that had been made foul by excrement or rot.

Eula Biss

#17. The whole action of the laws tended to increase the number of consumers of food and to diminish the number of producers, was due the invention of the Malthusian theory of population.

Henry Charles Carey

#18. We can invent as many theories we like, and any one of them can be made to fit the facts. But that theory is always preferred which makes the fewest number of assumptions.

Albert Einstein

#19. In theory, there is nothing the computer can do that the human mind can not do. The computer merely takes a finite amount of data and performs a finite number of operations upon them. The human mind can duplicate the process

Isaac Asimov

#20. a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation.

Stephen Hawking

#21. The overwhelming number of teachers ... are unable to name or describe a theory of learning that underlies what they do.

Alfie Kohn

#22. Being spiritual-but-nonreligious sounds good in theory - at least it's better than attending antiquated religious institutions. We can do that. And we have. A growing number of us identify as spiritual-but-nonreligious.

Gudjon Bergmann

#23. Last is D, the number of spatial dimensions. Due to interest in M-theory, physicists have returned to the question of whether life is possible in higher or lower dimensions.

Michio Kaku

#24. Political philosophy reaches for the best regime, a regime so good that it can hardly exist. Political science advances a theory - in fact, a number of theories - that promises to bring agreement and put an end to partisan dispute.

Harvey Mansfield

#25. The number of public policies that hinge on whether you believe in evolution - or which theory of evolution you subscribe to - are few to none.

Anonymous

#26. After preliminary work by a number of other distinguished mathematicians and economists, game theory as a systematic theory started with von Neumann and Morgenstern's book, 'Theory of Games and Economic Behavior,' published in 1944.

John Harsanyi

#27. She'd heard theories in her time regarding the number-one enemy of everything, ranging from Osama bin Laden to premarital sex. The dust theory she liked.

Barbara Kingsolver

#28. In network theory, the value of a system grows as approximately the square of the number of users of the system.

Robert Metcalfe

#29. If you take Darwin's theory and extend it to its logical end, it can be used to justify a number of very horrendous things.

Kirk Cameron

#30. Facts are of not much use, considered as facts. They bewilder by their number and their apparent incoherency. Let them be digested into theory, however, and brought into mutual harmony, and it is another matter.

Oliver Heaviside

#31. My number-one theory in life is that style is proportional to your lack of resources - the less you have, the more stylish you're likely to be.

Beth Ditto

#32. If even in science there is no a way of judging a theory but by assessing the number, faith and vocal energy of its supporters, then this must be even more so in the social sciences: truth lies in power.

Imre Lakatos

#33. Among top grandmasters the Dutch is a rare defense, which is good reason to play it! It has not been studied very deeply by many opponents, and theory, based on a small number of 'reliable' games, must be rather unreliable.

Bent Larsen

#34. But it is not at all certain that this superiority of the many over the sound few is possible in the case of every people and every large number. There are some whom it would be impossible: otherwise the theory would apply to wild animals- and yet some men are hardly any better than wild animals.

Aristotle.

#35. The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and detail, is the one that must rule all observation.

Adam Smith