Quotable Mathematics

"One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories." (Jean de La Bruyère, "Les Caractères" Aphorism 52, 168...

  "A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility. The story should never be made up of improbable incident...

" Numbers are ideal vehicles for promulgating bullshit. They feel objective, but are easily manipulated to tell whatever story one desi...

" An average does not tell the full story. It is hardly fully representative of a mass unless we know the manner in which the individua...

"Exploratory data analysis can never be the whole story, but nothing else can serve as the foundation stone - as the first step." ...

"Science is that story our society tells itself about the cosmos. Science supposedly provides an objective account of the material worl...

"An ending is an artificial device; we like endings, they are satisfying, convenient, and a point has been made. But time does does not...

"Storytelling is the art of unfolding knowledge in a way that makes each piece contribute to a larger truth." (Philip Gerard, ...

"A witty statesman said, you might prove anything by figures." (Thomas Carlyle, Chartism, 1840) “Some of the common ways of prod...

"Everything which distinguishes man from the animals depends upon this ability to volatilize perceptual metaphors in a schema, and thus...

“It is hard to navigate across one’s environment without having some ideas, however coarse, about it. Indeed, to face any situation we must ...