Eric Schechter's home page

Common errors in math • Why study calculus? • The cubic formula • What are "real numbers," really? • Infinity: introduction and history • Gauge (or KH or generalized-Riemann) integrals • Wolfram's math disproves "intelligent design"

Constructivism is difficult • Books, papers (my Erdös # is 5) • A web page for the Axiom of Choice • Math software (I used to collect it)

Kiesler: infinitesimals calculus • We All Use Math Every Day • Hexaflexagons • pi to a million places • The singularity nears • Math rap on YouTube

• A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street. -- David Hilbert, mathematician (1862-1943)
• A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. -- Max Planck, physicist (1858-1947)
• If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it? -- As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. -- Albert Einstein, physicist (1879-1955)
• We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about `and'. -- Arthur Eddington, astronomer, physicist, mathematician (1882-1944)
• The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. -- Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), humorist (1835-1910)
• The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -- Marcel Proust, novelist (1871-1922)
• The ceaseless, senseless demand for original scholarship in a number of fields, where only erudition is now possible, has led either to sheer irrelevancy, the famous knowing of more and more about less and less, or to the development of a pseudo-scholarship which actually destroys its object. -- Hannah Arendt, philosopher and political theorist (1906-1975)
• The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. -- J. B. S. Haldane, geneticist and evolutionary biologist (1892-1964)
• We don't know who discovered water, but we are certain it wasn't a fish. -- John Culkin, media theorist (1928-1993)
• However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. -- Winston Churchill, British prime minister (1874-1965)
• When the facts don't fit the frames, the frames are kept and the facts are ignored. -- It is a common folk theory of progressives that "the facts will set you free." If only you can get all the facts out there in the public eye, then every rational person will reach the right conclusion. It is a vain hope. Human brains just don't work that way. Framing matters. Frames once entrenched are hard to dispel. -- George Lakoff, linguist (1941- )
• In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. -- George Orwell, novelist and political commentator (1903-1950)
• A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students. -- John Ciardi, poet, translator, and etymologist (1916-1986)
• I have made the most important discovery of my career, the most important discovery of my life. It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic or reasons can be found. I am only here because of you, you are all my reasons. -- John Forbes Nash, Jr., mathematician, Nobel prize winner in economics (1928- )
• You know, things are going to be really different! . . . No, no, I mean really different! -- Mark Miller, computer scientist , quoted by Ray Kurzweil concerning the future and the singularity
• This took two millennia to prove and you want me to explain it to you before class??? -- anonymous