Math Education Quotes - Page 3

• One of the big misapprehensions about mathematics that we perpetrate in our classrooms is that the teacher always seems to know the answer to any problem that is discussed. This gives students the idea that there is a book somewhere with all the right answers to all of the interesting questions, and that teachers know those answers. And if one could get hold of the book, one would have everything settled. That's so unlike the true nature of mathematics.

  Leon Henkin

  Teacher, Book, Math

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• When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it.

  Lord Kelvin

  Math, Science, Numbers

  Popular Lectures and Addresses "Electrical Units of Measurement" (1889).

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• Five out of four people have trouble with fractions.

  Steven Wright

  Funny Motivational, Teaching, Math

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• Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Inspirational, Money, Math

  42 Copy quote
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  It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Mathematics, Mathematical, Possession

  Letter to Farkas Bolyai, September 02, 1808.

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• Beauty in mathematics is seeing the truth without effort.

  George Polya

  Education, Math, Effort

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• The only way to learn mathematics is to do mathematics. That tenet is the foundation of the do-it-yourself, Socratic, or Texas method.

  Paul Halmos

  Education, Knowledge, Math

  P.R. Halmos, Paul Richard Halmos (1982). “A Hilbert Space Problem Book”, p.7, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

  Maimonides

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

  223 Copy quote

• "The most powerful single idea in mathematics is the notion of a variable."

  Alexander Dewdney

  Education, Powerful, Math

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• One of the big misapprehensions about mathematics that we perpetrate in our classrooms is that the teacher always seems to know the answer to any problem that is discussed.

  Leon Henkin

  Teacher, Math, Answers

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• It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in soul.

  Sofia Kovalevskaya

  Math, Soul, Impossible

  "Sónya Kovalévsky: Her Recollections of Childhood" by Sofia Kovalevskaya, 1895.

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• To all of us who hold the Christian belief that God is truth, anything that is true is a fact about God, and mathematics is a branch of theology.

  Hilda Phoebe Hudson

  Christian, Education, Math

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• The man ignorant of mathematics will be increasingly limited in his grasp of the main forces of civilization.

  John G. Kemeny

  Math, Science, Men

  John G. Kemeny (1964). “Random Essays on Mathematics, Education, and Computers”

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• Don't just read it; fight it! Ask your own question, look for your own examples, discover your own proofs. Is the hypothesis necessary? Is the converse true? ... Where does the proof use the hypothesis?

  Paul Halmos

  Fighting, Example, Doe

  "I Want to be a Mathematician: An Automathography". Book by Paul Halmos, 1985.

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• Mathematics knows no races or geographic boundaries; for mathematics, the cultural world is one country.

  David Hilbert

  Country, Math, Race

  "Mathematical Circles Revisited". Book by Howard Whitley Eves, 1971.

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• Warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.

  Carl Jung

  Education, Appreciation, Teacher

  Carl Gustav Jung, Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, Gerhard Adler (1954). “The development of personality”

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• A mathematician who can only generalise is like a monkey who can only climb up a tree, and a mathematician who can only specialise is like a monkey who can only climb down a tree. In fact neither the up monkey nor the down monkey is a viable creature. A real monkey must find food and escape his enemies and so must be able to incessantly climb up and down. A real mathematician must be able to generalise and specialise.

  George Polya

  Real, Math, Tree

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• I am persuaded that this method [for calculating the volume of a sphere] will be of no little service to mathematics. For I foresee that once it is understood and established, it will be used to discover other theorems which have not yet occurred to me, by other mathematicians, now living or yet unborn.

  Archimedes

  Education, Math, Littles

  39 Copy quote

• Logic is invincible, because in order to combat logic it is necessary to use logic.

  Pierre Boutroux

  Knowledge, Math, Order

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• In the fall of 1972, President Nixon announced that the rate of increase of inflation was decreasing. This was the first time a president used the third derivative to advance his case for reelection.

  Hugo Rossi

  Time, Fall, Math

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• Teaching is the royal road to learning.

  Jessamyn West

  Education, Teaching, Learning

  Jessamyn West (1979). “The life I really lived: a novel”, Harcourt

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• Standard mathematics has recently been rendered obsolete by the discovery that for years we have been writing the numeral five backward. This has led to reevaluation of counting as a method of getting from one to ten. Students are taught advanced concepts of Boolean algebra, and formerly unsolvable equations are dealt with by threats of reprisals.

  Woody Allen

  Education, Writing, Science

  Woody Allen (2007). “The Insanity Defense: The Complete Prose”, Random House Incorporated

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• Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.

  George Washington Carver

  Education, Teacher, Freedom

  George Washington Carver, Gary R. Kremer (1991). “George Washington Carver: In His Own Words”, p.62, University of Missouri Press

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• Music is a more potent instrument than any other for education.

  Plato

  Music, Republic, Art Education

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• The title which I most covet is that of teacher. The writing of a research paper and the teaching of freshman calculus, and everything in between, falls under this rubric. Happy is the person who comes to understand something and then gets to explain it.

  Marshall A. Cohen

  Teacher, Fall, Teaching

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