Richard Hamming quotes - page 3

Great results in science and engineering are "bunched" in the same person too often for success to be a matter of random luck. (Richard Hamming)
The Postulates of Mathematics Were Not on the Stone Tablets that Moses Brought Down from Mt. Sinai. View quote
Richard Hamming
The beauty of mathematics often makes the subject matter much more attractive and easier to master. View quote
Richard Hamming
Since I was trying to teach "style" of thinking in science and engineering, and "style" is an art, I should therefore copy the methods of teaching used for the other arts-once the fundamentals have been learned. How to become a great painter cannot be taught in words... Art teachers usually let the advanced student paint, and then make suggestions... more or less as the points arise in the student's head-which is where learning is supposed to occur! View quote
Richard Hamming
Any unwillingness to learn mathematics today can greatly restrict your possibilities tomorrow. View quote
Richard Hamming
The Buddha told his disciples, "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense". I say the same to you-you must assume the responsibility for what you believe. View quote
Richard Hamming
Formal proofs, where there is deliberately no meaning, can convince only formalists, and of the results they themselves seem to deny any meaning. Is that to be the mathematics we are to use to understand the world we live in? View quote
Richard Hamming
It is easy to measure your mastery of the results via a conventional examination; it is less easy to measure your mastery of doing mathematics, of creating new (to you) results, and of your ability to surmount the almost infinite details to see the general situation. View quote
Richard Hamming
The calculus is probably the most useful single branch of mathematics. ...I have found the ability to do simple calculus, easily and reliably, was the most valuable part of mathematics I ever learned. View quote
Richard Hamming
A central problem in teaching mathematics is to communicate a reasonable sense of taste-meaning often when to, or not to, generalize, abstract, or extend something you have just done. View quote
Richard Hamming
Although textbooks (and professors) like to make definite statements indicating that they know what they are talking about, there is in fact a great deal of uncertainty and ambiguity in the world. ...we will not evade this question but rather explore (overexplore?) it. ...great progress is often made when what was long believed to be true is now seen to be perhaps not the whole truth. Thus the text often uses words... to cause you to think about the uncertainess and even the arbitrariness of much of our current conventions and definitions, to ponder about your acceptance of them. (Richard Hamming)
When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. [...] The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you. [...] The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, in my opinion, has ruined more good scientists than any institution has created, judged by what they did before they came and judged by what they did after. View quote
Richard Hamming
In forming your plan for your future you need to distinguish three different questions: What is possible? What is likely to happen? What is desirable to have happen? In a sense the first is Science... The second is Engineering.. The third is ethics, morals, or... value judgements. ...you will probably have an idea of how to alter things to make the more desirable future occur ...having a vision is what tends to separate the leaders from the followers. View quote
Richard Hamming
Unfortunately... the ADA language was designed by experts, and it shows all the non-humane features you can expect from them. It is... a typical Computer Science hacking job-do not try and understand what you are doing, just get it running. As a result of this poor psychological design... although a government contract may specify the programming be in ADA, probably over 90% will be done in FORTRAN, debugged, tested, and then painfully, by hand, be converted to a poor ADA program, with a high probability of errors! View quote
Richard Hamming
If you believe too much you'll never notice the flaws; if you doubt too much you won't get started. It requires a lovely balance. View quote
Richard Hamming
The emotion at the point of technical breakthrough is better than wine, women and song put together. View quote
Richard Hamming
Good scientists will fight the system rather than learn to work with the system. View quote
Richard Hamming
If you read all the time what other people have done, you will the think the way they thought. View quote
Richard Hamming
Are you sure you are not merely "programmed" in life by what by chance events happens to you? View quote
Richard Hamming
Only when field maintenance is part of the original design can it be safely controlled. View quote
Richard Hamming
The idea that theorems follow from the postulates does not correspond to simple observation. (Richard Hamming)
The people at the bottom do not have the larger, global view, but at the top they do not have the local view of all the details. View quote
Richard Hamming
This text is organized in the "spiral" for learning. A topic... is returned to again and again. View quote
Richard Hamming
They are learned by the constant use of the language and cannot be taught in any other fashion. View quote
Richard Hamming
Transmission through space (typically signaling) is the same as transmission through time. View quote
Richard Hamming