Gian-Carlo Rota famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

A mathematician's work is mostly a tangle of guesswork, analogy, wishful thinking and frustration, and proof, far from being the core of discovery, is more often than not a way of making sure that our minds are not playing tricks.
-- Gian-Carlo Rota

#Hard Work #Thinking #Frustration
The apex of mathematical achievement occurs when two or more fields which were thought to be entirely unrelated turn out to be closely intertwined. Mathematicians have never decided whether they should feel excited or upset by such events.
-- Gian-Carlo Rota

#Two #Achievement #Upset
The advice we give others is the advice that we ourselves need.
-- Gian-Carlo Rota

#Giving #Advice #Needs
There is something in statistics that makes it very similar to astrology.
-- Gian-Carlo Rota

#Astrology #Statistics
Running overtime is the one unforgivable error a lecturer can make. After fifty minutes (one microcentury as von Neumann used to say) everybody's attention will turn elsewhere.
-- Gian-Carlo Rota

#Running #Science #Errors
Philosophers and psychiatrists should explain why it is that we mathematicians are in the habit of systematically erasing our footsteps. Scientists have always looked askance at this strange habit of mathematicians, which has changed little from Pythagoras to our day.
-- Gian-Carlo Rota

#Littles #Philosopher #Strange
Combinatorics is an honest subject. No adÃ¨les, no sigma-algebras. You count balls in a box, and you either have the right number or you haven't. You get the feeling that the result you have discovered is forever, because it's concrete. Other branches of mathematics are not so clear-cut. Functional analysis of infinite-dimensional spaces is never fully convincing; you don't get a feeling of having done an honest day's work. Don't get the wrong idea - combinatorics is not just putting balls into boxes. Counting finite sets can be a highbrow undertaking, with sophisticated techniques.
-- Gian-Carlo Rota

#Math #Cutting #Ideas
If we have no idea why a statement is true, we can still prove it by induction.
-- Gian-Carlo Rota

#Ideas #Mathematics #Prove It
Nature imitates mathematics.
-- Gian-Carlo Rota

#Mathematics
How did he do it? He must be a genius!
-- Gian-Carlo Rota

#Genius
God created infinity, and man, unable to understand infinity, had to invent finite sets.
-- Gian-Carlo Rota

#Men #Statistics #Infinity
Mathematics is the study of analogies between analogies. All science is. Scientists want to show that things that don't look alike are really the same. That is one of their innermost Freudian motivations. In fact, that is what we mean by understanding.
-- Gian-Carlo Rota

#Motivation #Mean #Science
[In mathematics] There are two kinds of mistakes. There are fatal mistakes that destroy a theory, but there are also contingent ones, which are useful in testing the stability of a theory.
-- Gian-Carlo Rota

#Mistake #Two #Kind
Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, "How did he do it? He must be a genius!"
-- Gian-Carlo Rota

#People #Giving #Advice
Making mathematics accessible to the educated layman, while keeping high scientific standards, has always been considered a treacherous navigation between the Scylla of professional contempt and the Charybdis of public misunderstanding.
-- Gian-Carlo Rota

#Navigation #Scylla #Mathematics
The progress of mathematics can be viewed as progress from the infinite to the finite.
-- Gian-Carlo Rota

#Progress #Infinite #Mathematics
Theorems are not to mathematics what successful courses are to a meal.
-- Gian-Carlo Rota

#Successful #Meals #Mathematics
We often hear that mathematics consists mainly of "proving theorems." Is a writer's job mainly that of "writing sentences?"
-- Gian-Carlo Rota

#Jobs #Writing #Mathematics
Every lecture should state one main point and repeat it over and over, like a theme with variations. An audience is like a herd of cows, moving slowly in the direction they are being driven towards. If we make one point, we have a good chance that the audience will take the right direction; if we make several points, then the cows will scatter all over the field. The audience will lose interest and everyone will go back to the thoughts they interrupted in order to come to our lecture.
-- Gian-Carlo Rota

#Moving #Order #Variation
Every field has its taboos. In algebraic geometry the taboos are (1) writing a draft that can be followed by anyone but two or three of one's closest friends, (2) claiming that a result has applications, (3) mentioning the word 'combinatorial,' and (4) claiming that algebraic geometry existed before Grothendieck (only some handwaving references to 'the Italians' are allowed provided they are not supported by specific references).
-- Gian-Carlo Rota

#Writing #Two #Three

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