Magic in Mathematics II

 "In mathematics, it’s the limitations of a reasoned argument with the tools you have available, and with magic it’s to use your tools and sleight of hand to bring about a certain effect without the audience knowing what you’re doing. [...]When you’re inventing a trick, it’s always possible to have an elephant walk on stage, and while the elephant is in front of you, sneak something under your coat, but that’s not a good trick. Similarly with mathematical proof, it is always possible to bring out the big guns, but then you lose elegance, or your conclusions aren’t very different from your hypotheses, and it’s not a very interesting theorem." (Persi Diaconis, 2008)

"A genuine experience of the unexpected, in maths as much as in magic, demands of its performer at once originality of insight and a lightness of touch. Even a single step too many in a method renders ugly and clumsy the theorem or the trick." (Daniel Tammet, "Thinking in Numbers", 2012)

"The barrier to an appreciation of mathematical beauty is not insurmountable, however. […] The beauty adored by mathematicians can be pursued through the everyday: through games, and music, and magic." (Daniel Tammet, "Thinking in Numbers" , 2012)

"Good statistics are not a trick, although they are a kind of magic. Good statistics are not smoke and mirrors; in fact, they help us see more clearly. Good statistics are like a telescope for an astronomer, a microscope for a bacteriologist, or an X-ray for a radiologist. If we are willing to let them, good statistics help us see things about the world around us and about ourselves - both large and small - that we would not be able to see in any other way." (Tim Harford, "The Data Detective: Ten easy rules to make sense of statistics", 2020)

"Pure mathematics is the magician's real wand." (Friederich von Hardenberg [Novalis])

"[Arithmetic] is another of the great master-keys of life. With it the astronomer opens the depths of the heavens; the engineer, the gates of the mountains; the navigator, the pathways of the deep. The skillful arrangement, the rapid handling of figures, is a perfect magician's wand." (Edward Everett)