"Science is that story our society tells itself about the cosmos. Science supposedly provides an objective account of the material world based upon measurement and quantification so that structure, process, movement, and transformation can be described mathematically in terms of fundamental laws."
"[…] a mathematician is more anonymous than an artist. While we may greatly admire a mathematician who discovers a beautiful proof, the human story behind the discovery eventually fades away and it is, in the end, the mathematics itself that delights us." (Timothy Gowers, "Mathematics", 2002)
"The danger arises when a culture takes its own story as the absolute truth, and seeks to impose this truth on others as the yardstick of all knowledge and belief."
"The revelation that the graph appears to climb so smoothly, even though the primes themselves are so unpredictable, is one of the most miraculous in mathematics and represents one of the high points in the story of the primes. On the back page of his book of logarithms, Gauss recorded the discovery of his formula for the number of primes up to N in terms of the logarithm function. Yet despite the importance of the discovery, Gauss told no one what he had found. The most the world heard of his revelation were the cryptic words, 'You have no idea how much poetry there is in a table of logarithms.'" (Marcus du Sautoy, "The Music of the Primes", 2003)
"A narrative is similar to a model in three ways. First, narratives, like models, are conceptual constructions under the control of a story teller. Second, a narrative replicates some aspects of past experiences, recalling events that are at least temporally remote, and in most cases far away. Here's the present teller, close to the reader or listener, and there at a distance is the tale. Third, a narrative has a projective dimension. Reflection on past activity leads to planning and projection of future activity, so that the story teller anticipates encounters yet to occur. The projective aspect of narratives, and models, is essential for revealing unobserved, but observable, events." (Daniel Rothbart [Ed.], "Modeling: Gateway to the Unknown", 2004)
"The story of π reflects the most seminal, the most serious and sometimes the silliest aspects of mathematics. A surprising amount of the most important mathematicians and a significant number of the most important mathematicians have contributed to its unfolding - directly or otherwise." (J Lennart Berggren et al, "π", 2004)
"A meme is to thinking what a gene is to evolution. A meme is defined as any idea, behavior, or skill. Like a gene, it can replicate by transferring from one person to another by imitation: stories, fashions, inventions, recipes, songs, ways of plowing a field or throwing a baseball or making a sculpture. Like a gene, it competes with other memes, as ideas and behavior compete in a culture and between cultures." (Didier Sornette, "Why Stock Markets Crash: Critical Events in Complex Financial Systems", 2003)
"In science, all important ideas need names and stories to fix them in the memory." (Benoît B Mandelbrot, "The (Mis)Behavior of Markets", 2004)
"Limit a sentence to no more than three numerical values. If you've got more important quantities to report, break those up into other sentences. More importantly, however, make sure that each number is an important piece of information. Which are the important numbers that truly advance the story?" (Charles Livingston & Paul Voakes, "Working with Numbers and Statistics: A handbook for journalists", 2005)
"Numbers are often useful in stories because they record a recent change in some amount, or because they are being compared with other numbers. Percentages, ratios and proportions are often better than raw numbers in establishing a context." (Charles Livingston & Paul Voakes, "Working with Numbers and Statistics: A handbook for journalists", 2005)
"An infographic’s headline should summarize the main point of the presentation. Any introductory text or 'chatter' should explain the most newsworthy information within the context of the visual story being told; i.e., is the what of the story most important? Is the how of the story most important?, etc." (Jennifer George-Palilonis," A Practical Guide to Graphics Reporting: Information Graphics for Print, Web & Broadcast", 2006)
"Mathematical problems, or puzzles, are important to real mathematics (like solving real-life problems), just as fables, stories, and anecdotes are important to the young in understanding real life. Mathematical problems are ‘sanitized’ mathematics, where an elegant solution has already been found (by someone else, of course), the question is stripped of all superfluousness and posed in an interesting and (hopefully) thought-provoking way. If mathematics is likened to prospecting for gold, solving a good mathematical problem is akin to a ‘hide-and-seek’ course in gold-prospecting: you are given a nugget to find, and you know what it looks like, that it is out there somewhere, that it is not too hard to reach, that it is unearthing within your capabilities, and you have conveniently been given the right equipment (i.e. data) to get it. It may be hidden in a cunning place, but it will require ingenuity rather than digging to reach it." (Terence Tao, "Solving Mathematical Problems: A Personal Perspective", 2006)
"The appeal of Monstrous Moonshine lies in its mysteriousness: it unexpectedly associates various special modular functions with the Monster, even though modular functions and elements of Mare conceptually incommensurable. Now, ‘understanding’ something means to embed it naturally into a broader context. Why is the sky blue? Because of the way light scatters in gases. Why does light scatter in gases the way it does? Because of Maxwell’s equations. In order to understand Monstrous Moonshine, to resolve the mystery, we should search for similar phenomena, and fit them all into the same story." (Terry Gannon, "Moonshine Beyond the Monster: The Bridge Connecting Algebra, Modular Forms and Physics", 2006)
"Mathematical problems, or puzzles, are important to real mathematics (like solving real-life problems), just as fables, stories, and anecdotes are important to the young in understanding real life. Mathematical problems are ‘sanitized’ mathematics, where an elegant solution has already been found (by someone else, of course), the question is stripped of all superfluousness and posed in an interesting and (hopefully) thought-provoking way. If mathematics is likened to prospecting for gold, solving a good mathematical problem is akin to a ‘hide-and-seek’ course in gold-prospecting: you are given a nugget to find, and you know what it looks like, that it is out there somewhere, that it is not too hard to reach, that it is unearthing within your capabilities, and you have conveniently been given the right equipment (i.e. data) to get it. It may be hidden in a cunning place, but it will require ingenuity rather than digging to reach it." (Terence Tao, "Solving Mathematical Problems: A Personal Perspective", 2006)
"We all construct mental models that describe our various mental states, bodies of knowledge about our abilities, depictions of our acquaintances, and collections of stories about our pasts. Then, whenever we use our models of ourselves, we tend to use terms like conscious - when those reflections lead to choices we make, and we use unconscious or unintentional to describe those activities that we regard as beyond our control." (Marvin Minsky, "The Emotion Machine: Commonsense thinking, artificial intelligence, and the future of the human mind", 2006)
"Oftentimes a statistical graphic provides the evidence for a plausible story, and the evidence, though perhaps only circumstantial, can be quite convincing. […] But such graphical arguments are not always valid. Knowledge of the underlying phenomena and additional facts may be required." (Howard Wainer, "Graphic Discovery: A trout in the milk and other visuals" 2nd, 2008)
"Great stories agree with our worldview. The best stories don't teach people anything new. Instead the best stories agree with what the audience already believes and makes the members of the audience feel smart and secure when reminded how right they were in the thirst place." (Seth Godin, "All Marketers are Liars", 2009)
"Mostly we rely on stories to put our ideas into context and give them meaning. It should be no surprise, then, that the human capacity for storytelling plays an important role in the intrinsically human-centered approach to problem solving, design thinking."
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