The New York Times Book of Mathematics Quotes

“There may be some easy solution right in front of your nose that you keep missing.” Linear programming problems can seem very hard indeed.”
― Gina Kolata, The New York Times Book of Mathematics: More Than 100 Years of Writing by the Numbers

“cellular automata.”
― Gina Kolata, The New York Times Book of Mathematics: More Than 100 Years of Writing by the Numbers

“Such numbers, like 2, 3, 5 and 7, have no divisors”
― Gina Kolata, The New York Times Book of Mathematics: More Than 100 Years of Writing by the Numbers

“Prime numbers are numbers that are divisible only by one and themselves”
― Gina Kolata, The New York Times Book of Mathematics: More Than 100 Years of Writing by the Numbers

“The first few primes are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 and 13—but despite their simple definition the prime numbers appear to be scattered randomly amid the integers.”
― Gina Kolata, The New York Times Book of Mathematics: More Than 100 Years of Writing by the Numbers

“The Riemann hypothesis, first tossed off by Bernhard Riemann in 1859 in a paper about the distribution of prime numbers,”
― Gina Kolata, The New York Times Book of Mathematics: More Than 100 Years of Writing by the Numbers

“Lagrangian coherent structures.”
― Gina Kolata, The New York Times Book of Mathematics: More Than 100 Years of Writing by the Numbers

“The theorem says that equations of the form xn + yn = zn have no solutions when n is a whole number greater than 2 and when x, y and z are positive whole numbers.”
― Gina Kolata, The New York Times Book of Mathematics: More Than 100 Years of Writing by the Numbers

“Fermat’s Last Theorem dates to 1637. The French mathematician and physicist Pierre de Fermat had scribbled it in the margins of a book, adding that he had discovered a marvelous proof but that the margins were too small to hold it.”
― Gina Kolata, The New York Times Book of Mathematics: More Than 100 Years of Writing by the Numbers

“The problem, named after the great French polymath Henri Poincaré, has led mathematicians on a frustrating chase for a century. It hypothesizes that any three-dimensional space without holes is essentially a sphere.”
― Gina Kolata, The New York Times Book of Mathematics: More Than 100 Years of Writing by the Numbers

“Science has thus found itself faced with this vexing duality, a universe made up of atoms which has to have two sets of principles to explain it, one set (relativity) for the whole, and another set (quantum mechanics) for the building blocks (atoms) out of which the whole is constituted.”
― Gina Kolata, The New York Times Book of Mathematics: More Than 100 Years of Writing by the Numbers

“We then divide the groups of interest by the total number of groups in the entire sample space and we have our probability.”
― Gina Kolata, The New York Times Book of Mathematics: More Than 100 Years of Writing by the Numbers

“The formula for this is 4!/2!2! = 6 (nCr = n!/r!n – r! where n is the total number you choose from, and r is the number you pick).”
― Gina Kolata, The New York Times Book of Mathematics: More Than 100 Years of Writing by the Numbers

“Our tough problem basically uses just one permutation, two combinations, and a simple summation. The trick is to keep each calculation separate from others, and use the right numbers for each.”
― Gina Kolata, The New York Times Book of Mathematics: More Than 100 Years of Writing by the Numbers

“When you have to choose, use combinations; when you arrange or order, use permutations! That’s all there is to it!”
― Gina Kolata, The New York Times Book of Mathematics: More Than 100 Years of Writing by the Numbers

“The study has direct implications for architecture, where it affects the design of strong, light structures, and for the chemistry of polymers, substances with long chains of molecules.”
― Gina Kolata, The New York Times Book of Mathematics: More Than 100 Years of Writing by the Numbers

“Mathematicians have long pursued an abstract class of these structures known as infinite, complete minimal surfaces”
― Gina Kolata, The New York Times Book of Mathematics: More Than 100 Years of Writing by the Numbers