Quotesdtb.com
Home
Authors
Quotes of the day
Top quotes
Topics
Notation Quotes
During the process of stepwise refinement, a notation which is natural to the problem in hand should be used as long as possible.
Niklaus Wirth
I counted to ten slowly, using binary notation.
Robert A. Heinlein
As the mother teaches her children how to express themselves in their language, so one Gypsy musician teaches the other. They have never shown any need for notation.
Franz Liszt
That this subject [of imaginary magnitudes] has hitherto been considered from the wrong point of view and surrounded by a mysterious obscurity, is to be attributed largely to an ill-adapted notation. If for instance, +1, -1, √-1 had been called direct, inverse, and lateral units, instead of positive, negative, and imaginary (or even impossible) such an obscurity would have been out of question.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
If it is to be effective as a tool of thought, a notation must allow convenient expression not only of notions arising directly from a problem, but also of those arising in subsequent analysis, generalization, and specialization.
Kenneth E. Iverson
The precision provided (or enforced) by programming languages and their execution can identify lacunas, ambiguities, and other areas of potential confusion in conventional [mathematical] notation.
Kenneth E. Iverson
Most programming languages are decidedly inferior to mathematical notation and are little used as tools of thought in ways that would be considered significant by, say, an applied mathematician.
Kenneth E. Iverson
With the computer and programming languages, mathematics has newly-acquired tools, and its notation should be reviewed in the light of them. The computer may, in effect, be used as a patient, precise, and knowledgeable "native speaker" of mathematical notation.
Kenneth E. Iverson
The properties of executability and universality associated with programming languages can be combined, in a single language, with the well-known properties of mathematical notation which make it such an effective tool of thought.
Kenneth E. Iverson
The initial motive for developing APL was to provide a tool for writing and teaching. Although APL has been exploited mostly in commercial programming, I continue to believe that its most important use remains to be exploited: as a simple, precise, executable notation for the teaching of a wide range of subjects.
Kenneth E. Iverson
I was appalled to find that the mathematical notation on which I had been raised failed to fill the needs of the courses I was assigned, and I began work on extensions to notation that might serve. In particular, I adopted the matrix algebra used in my thesis work, the systematic use of matrices and higher-dimensional arrays (almost) learned in a course in Tensor Analysis rashly taken in my third year at Queen's, and (eventually) the notion of Operators in the sense introduced by Heaviside in his treatment of Maxwell's equations.
Kenneth E. Iverson
Although mathematical notation undoubtedly possesses parsing rules, they are rather loose, sometimes contradictory, and seldom clearly stated. [...] The proliferation of programming languages shows no more uniformity than mathematics. Nevertheless, programming languages do bring a different perspective. [...] Because of their application to a broad range of topics, their strict grammar, and their strict interpretation, programming languages can provide new insights into mathematical notation.
Kenneth E. Iverson
It is important to distinguish the difficulty of describing and learning a piece of notation from the difficulty of mastering its implications. [...] Indeed, the very suggestiveness of a notation may make it seem harder to learn because of the many properties it suggests for exploration.
Kenneth E. Iverson
To speak about notation as the only way that you can guarantee structure of course is already very suspect.
Evan Parker
The development of Indian trigonometry, based on sine as against chord of the Greeks, a necessity for astronomical calculations with his own concise notation which expresses the full sine table in just one couplet for easy remembrance. One of the two methods suggested by him for the sine table is based on the property that the second order sine differences were proportional to sines themselves.
Aryabhata
His work, called Aryabhatiya, is composed of three parts, in only the first of which use is made of a special notation of numbers. It is an alphabetical system in which the twenty-five consonants represent 1-25, respectively; other letters stand for 30, 40, ...., 100 etc. The other mathematical parts of Aryabhatiya consists of rules without examples. Another alphabetic system prevailed in Southern India, the numbers 1-19 being designated by consonants, etc.
Aryabhata
The miraculous powers of modern calculation are due to three inventions : the Arabic Notation, Decimal Fractions and Logarithms.
Florian Cajori
...it was Darwin's chief contribution, not only to Biology but to the whole of natural science, to have brought to light a process by which contingencies a priori improbable, are given, in the process of time, an increasing probability, until it is their non-occurrence rather than their occurrence which becomes highly improbable. ... Let the reader ... attempt to calculate the prior probability that a hundred generations of his ancestry in the direct male line should each have left at least one son. The odds against such a contingency as it would have appeared to his hundredth ancestor (about the time of King Solomon) would require for their expression forty- four figures of the decimal notation; yet this improbable event has certainly happened.
Ronald Fisher
I wrote music as soon as I knew notation.
Harrison Birtwistle
If the task of philosophy is to break the domination of words over the human mind [...], then my concept notation, being developed for these purposes, can be a useful instrument for philosophers [...] I believe the cause of logic has been advanced already by the invention of this concept notation.
Gottlob Frege
[The Analytical Engine] might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine...Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.
Ada Lovelace
The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.
Elias Canetti
Previous
1
(Current)
2
3
Next