Micaelle Nogueira de Carvalho’s Reviews > How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking > Status Update

“The standard economic story is that human beings, when they’re acting rationally, make decisions that maximize their utility. Everything in life has utility; good things, like dollars and cake, have positive utility, while bad things, like stubbed toes and missed planes, have negative utility. Some people even like to measure utility in standard units, called utils.” – Jordan Ellenberg, 2014

“The unknown is a stone in the sea, which obstructs our progress. We can try to pack dynamite in the crevices of rock, detonate it, and repeat until the rock breaks apart [...]. Or you can take a more contemplative approach, allowing your level of understanding gradually and gently to rise, until after a time what appeared as an obstacle is overtopped by the calm water, and is gone.” – Jordan Ellenberg, 2014

“What Sherlock Holmes should have said was: ‘It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth, unless the truth is a hypothesis it didn’t occur to you to consider.’ “ - Jordan Ellenberg, 2014

“You don’t send binoculars to do a telescope’s job.” - Jordan Ellenberg, 2014

“[...] improbable things happen a lot.” - Jordan Ellenberg, 2014.

"But the calculator enters only once you've figured out what calculation you want to do. [...] Dividing one number by another is mere computation, figuring out what you should divide by what is mathematics." - Jordan Ellenberg, 2014.

"Moral lesson: people who go into mathematics for fame and glory don't stay in mathematics for long" - Jordan Ellenberg, 2014

"Moral lesson: people who go into mathematics for fame and glory don't stay in mathematics for long" - Jordan Ellenberg, 2014