Why Learn Mathematics?
“...throughout the city, artists sharpen pencils and dip brushes and tune guitars. Others (mathematicians), with their theorems and equations revel just as much in the world’s possibilities. / The world needs artists. Into words and pictures, notes and numbers each transforms their portion of the night. A mathematician at his desk glimpses something hitherto invisible. He is about to turn darkness into light.”
- Daniel Tammet, Thinking in Numbers
“The idea behind teaching is to expect students to learn why things are true, rather than have them memorize ways of solving a few problems, as most of our books have done.”
- R. Askey, The American Mathematics Monthly
“No branch of education is considered so valuable a preparation for household management and politics, and all arts and crafts, sciences and professions, as arithmetic; best of all by some divine art it arouses the dull and sleepy brain, and makes it studious, mindful and sharp.”
- Plato, on why the understanding of mathematics was critical to entering the Academy
“If I were again beginning my studies, I would follow the advice of Plato and start with mathematics.”
- Galileo Galilei
“The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.”
- Charles Celeb Cotton
“One of the most amazing things about mathematics is the people who do math aren’t usually interested in application, because mathematics itself is truly a beautiful art form. It’s structures and patterns, and that’s what we love, and that’s what we get off on.”
- Danica McKellar
“A lot of music is mathematics. It’s balance.”
- Mel Brooks
“The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.”
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
“Mathematics is the door and key to the sciences.”
- Roger Bacon
“Neglect of mathematics works injury to all knowledge, since he who is ignorant of it cannot know the other sciences or the things of the world.”
- Roger Bacon
“As long as algebra and geometry have been separated, their progress have been slow and their uses limited; but when these two sciences have been united, they have lent each mutual forces, and have marched together towards perfection.”
- Joseph Louis Lagrange
“This, therefore, is Mathematics:
She reminds you of the invisible forms of the soul;
she gives life to her own discoveries;
she awakens the mind and purifies the intellect;
she brings to light our intrinsic ideas;
she abolishes oblivion and ignorance which are ours by birth…”
- Diadochus Proclus
“The understanding of mathematics is necessary for a sound grasp of ethics.”
- Socrates