George Polya Quotes About Students

Quotes about: Students

• Hilbert once had a student in mathematics who stopped coming to his lectures, and he was finally told the young man had gone off to become a poet. Hilbert is reported to have remarked: 'I never thought he had enough imagination to be a mathematician.'

  George Polya

  Creativity, Men, Imagination

• Even fairly good students, when they have obtained the solution of the problem and written down neatly the argument, shut their books and look for something else. Doing so, they miss an important and instructive phase of the work. ... A good teacher should understand and impress on his students the view that no problem whatever is completely exhausted.

  George Polya

  Teacher, Book, Hard Work

• To teach effectively a teacher must develop a feeling for his subject; he cannot make his students sense its vitality if he does not sense it himself. He cannot share his enthusiasm when he has no enthusiasm to share. How he makes his point may be as important as the point he makes; he must personally feel it to be important.

  George Polya

  Teacher, Teaching, Math

  George Pólya, Leon Bowden (1977). “Mathematical Methods in Science”, p.1, Cambridge University Press

• One of the first and foremost duties of the teacher is not to give his students the impression that mathematical problems have little connection with each other, and no connection at all with anything else. We have a natural opportunity to investigate the connections of a problem when looking back at its solution.

  George Polya

  Teacher, Science, Opportunity

  George Pólya (1948). “How to solve it: a new aspect of mathematical method”

• The teacher can seldom afford to miss the questions: What is the unknown? What are the data? What is the condition? The student should consider the principal parts of the problem attentively, repeatedly, and from from various sides.

  George Polya

  Teacher, Science, Data

  George Pólya (1957). “How to solve it: a new aspect of mathematical method”

• There was a seminar for advanced students in Zürich that I was teaching and von Neumann was in the class. I came to a certain theorem, and I said it is not proved and it may be difficult. Von Neumann didn't say anything but after five minutes he raised his hand. When I called on him he went to the blackboard and proceeded to write down the proof. After that I was afraid of von Neumann.

  George Polya

  Teaching, Writing, Science

  "How to Solve It" by George Polya, 2nd edition, (p. xv), 1957.

• The first and foremost duty of the high school in teaching mathematics is to emphasize methodical work in problem solving...The teacher who wishes to serve equally all his students, future users and nonusers of mathematics, should teach problem solving so that it is about one-third mathematics and two-thirds common sense.

  George Polya

  Education, Teacher, Teaching

• John von Neumann was the only student I was ever afraid of.

  George Polya

  Students, Von Neumann

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin