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Quote by Charles Darwin

“I suppose you are two fathoms deep in mathematics, and if you are, then God help you. For so am I, only with this difference: I stick fast in the mud at the bottom, and there I shall remain.”

Quote by Charles Darwin

Author

Charles Darwin, a British naturalist, is renowned as the founder of evolutionary biology. Born on February 12, 1809, in England, he passed away on April 19, 1882. Darwin is best known for his research on the theory of evolution, which proposed that species evolve through natural selection and survival of the fittest. more

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“When I was a child, the Earth was said to be two billion years old. Now scientists say it's four and a half billion. So that makes me two and a half billion.”

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“I soon found an opportunity to be introduced to a famous professor Johann Bernoulli. ... True, he was very busy and so refused flatly to give me private lessons; but he gave me much more valuable advice to start reading more difficult mathematical books on my own and to study them as diligently as I could; if I came across some obstacle or difficulty, I was given permission to visit him freely every Sunday afternoon and he kindly explained to me everything I could not understand.”

“Notable enough, however, are the controversies over the series 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + 1 - ... whose sum was given by Leibniz as 1/2, although others disagree. ... Understanding of this question is to be sought in the word "sum"; this idea, if thus conceived - namely, the sum of a series is said to be that quantity to which it is brought closer as more terms of the series are taken - has relevance only for convergent series, and we should in general give up the idea of sum for divergent series.”

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“A good problem should be more than a mere exercise; it should be challenging and not too easily solved by the student, and it should require some "dreaming" time.”

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“Imagine that you wanted your children to learn the names of all their cousins, aunts and uncles. But you never actually let them meet or play with them. You just showed them pictures of them, and told them to memorize their names. Each day you'd have them recite the names, over and over again. You'd say, "OK, this is a picture of your great-aunt Beatrice. Her husband was your great-uncle Earnie. They had three children, your uncles Harpo, Zeppo, and Gummo. Harpo married your aunt Leonie ... yadda, yadda, yadda."”

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