"Mathematics has given us dazzling insights into the power of exponential growth and how the same patterns recur in numbers, regardless of the phenomena being observed." (Richar Koch, "The Power Laws", 2000)
"Somehow mathematicians seem to long for more than just results from their proofs; they want insight." (John L Casti, "Mathematical Mountaintops: The Five Most Famous Problems of All Time", 2001)
"When we have difficulties solving a problem, insight into its solution can come about by restructuring the problem." (S Ian Robertson, "Problem Solving", 2001)
"Natural frequencies facilitate inferences made on the basis of numerical information. The representation does part of the reasoning, taking care of the multiplication the mind would have to perform if given probabilities. In this sense, insight can come from outside the mind." (Gerd Gigerenzer, "Calculated Risks: How to know when numbers deceive you", 2002)
"Why does representing information in terms of natural frequencies rather than probabilities or percentages foster insight? For two reasons. First, computational simplicity: The representation does part of the computation. And second, evolutionary and developmental primacy: Our minds are adapted to natural frequencies." (Gerd Gigerenzer, "Calculated Risks: How to know when numbers deceive you", 2002)
"Becoming a real researcher has been the ultimate humbling experience for me. Nature is the examiner from hell; if you find new things at all, you always find them the hard way, with sweat and tears. Only then do you notice that there was a really easy way to find them. But this insight rarely arrives before you have been utterly humiliated and reduced to despair." (João Magueijo, "Faster Than The Speed Of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation", 2003)
"Proofs should be as short, transparent, elegant, and insightful as possible." (Burkard Polster,"Q.E.D.: Beauty in Mathematical Proof", 2004)
"Central tendency is the formal expression for the notion of where data is centered, best understood by most readers as 'average'. There is no one way of measuring where data are centered, and different measures provide different insights." (Charles Livingston & Paul Voakes, "Working with Numbers and Statistics: A handbook for journalists", 2005)
"Insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out." (Malcolm Gladwell, "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking", 2005)
"It is from this continuousness of thought and perception that the scientist, like the writer, receives the crucial flash of insight out of which a piece of work is conceived and executed. And the scientist (again like the writer) is grateful when the insight comes, because insight is the necessary catalyst through which the abstract is made concrete, intuition be given language, language provides specificity, and real work can go forward." (Vivian Gornick, "Women in Science: Then and Now", 2009)
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