Quotable Mathematics

"A model may be defined as a substitute of any object or system. […] A mental image used in thinking is a model, and it is not the re...

"I believe that economic theory has arrived at a point in its development where the appeal to quantitative empirical data has become mo...

"A bias can be considered a limiting case of a nonwhite disturbance as a constant is the most time-correlated process possible." (...

"It is not enough to know the critical stress, that is, the quantitative breaking point of a complex design; one should also know as mu...

"Stability is commonly thought of as desirable, for its presence enables the system to combine of flexibility and activity in performan...

"The fruitful generalization in mathematics often involves starting from a commonsense concept such as a point on a line. A mathematica...

"What I am offering, is not a scientific theory, but a method; the first step in the construction of a model is to describe the dynamic...

"[...] if the behavior points for the entire control surface are plotted and then connected, they form a smooth surface: the behavior s...

"Mathematical model making is an art. If the model is too small, a great deal of analysis and numerical solution can be done, but the r...

"Any progress in the theory of partial differential equations must also bring about a progress in Mechanics." (Carl G J Jacobi, ...

"In short, complex adaptive systems are characterized by perpetual novelty." (M Mitchell Waldrop, "Complexity: The Emerging S...

"With the growing interest in complex adaptive systems, artificial life, swarms and simulated societies, the concept of 'collective...

"Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. Th...

"When one combines the new insights gained from studying far-from-equilibrium states and nonlinear processes, along with these comp...

"Finite systems of deterministic ordinary nonlinear differential equations may be designed to represent forced dissipative hydrodynamic...

"Indeed, except for the very simplest physical systems, virtually everything and everybody in the world is caught up in a vast, nonline...

"In complex systems cause and effect are often not closely related in either time or space. The structure of a complex system is not a ...

"The term 'systems engineering' is a term with an air of romance and of mystery. The romance and the mystery come from its use ...

"Tectology, or the theory of structure in organisms, is the comprehensive science of individuality among living natural bodies, which u...