Home/Recent kwiples > Issues >

math

Wednesday 21st of January 2026

2007 financial crisis “Did you ever hear the word ‘derivatives’?” he said. Do you think our  guys could have invented, say, credit default swaps? Give me a break! They couldn't have done the math.” “So having smart guys there almost caused Wall Street to collapse.” “You got it,” he said. “It took you a while, but you got it.” Calvin Trillin, conversation with a retirement-aged Ivy Leaguer from the '50s or early '60s, when only the lower third of a class went to Wall Street, unlike the geniuses from MIT and Caltech who went in the '80s or '90s © 2015 Kwiple.com
Artificial intelligence The really important thing to remember is that this is just math —  it doesn't have to be scary!  Meredith Broussard, a professor whose research focuses on artificial intelligence in journalism © 2022 Kwiple.com
By the numbers The most covetable trend in China is the most basic: education. China last year produced roughly nine times as many graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics as the US. Financial Times, September 19, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White. Rochelle Gutierrez, University of Illinois professor of education © 2016 Kwiple.com
Gerrymandering Jonathan Mattingly swings his legs up onto his desk, presses a key on his laptop and changes the results of the 2012 elections in North Carolina. On the screen, flickering lines and dots outline a map of the state's 13 congres- sional districts, each of which chooses one person to the US House of Representatives. By tweaking the borders of those election districts, but not changing a single vote, Mattingly's maps show candidates from the Democratic Party winning six, seven or even eight seats in the race. In reality, they won only four – despite earning a majority of votes overall. “The mathematicians who want to save democracy,” Nature, Vol. 546, 8 June 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Gun control activists say When I said I'd rather die than go to math class? That was hyperbole, assholes  Placard, March For Our Lives rally, March 24, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Knowledge We are able to ask perfectly natural geometric questions that we can't answer. Moreover, we can prove  that they are unanswerable. In other works, we can know that something is unknowable. Maybe this is not so depressing after all – it's a pretty amazing human accomplishment! Paul Lockhart, Measurement © 2017 Kwiple.com
Math Ancient geometry begins with One, while modern mathematics and geometry begin with Zero. Robert Lawlor, Sacred Geometry © 2023 Kwiple.com
Math Arithmetic can be a gateway drug for mathematics. Paul Lockhart, Arithmetic © 2017 Kwiple.com
Math At the root of maths chauvinism is a childlike craving for certainties, or at least probabilities, amid the flux of adult experience. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, October 20, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Math Geometry is the cilantro of math. Few are neutral. Jordan Ellenberg, Shape © 2022 Kwiple.com
Math Here's something that happens a lot in math. You sit down to solve one problem, and when you finish, the next day or month or year, you realize you've solved a lot more problems at the same time. When a nail requires you to invent a truly  new kind of hammer, everything looks like a nail worth hitting with that hammer, and a lot of things actually are. Jordan Ellenberg, Shape © 2022 Kwiple.com
Math A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street. David Hilbert © 2016 Kwiple.com
Math Mathematicians are prone to an imperial tendency; we often see other people's problems as consisting of a true mathematical core surrounding by an irritating amount of distracting domain- specific knowlege, which we impatiently tear away to get as quickly as possible to “the good stuff.” Jordan Ellenberg, Shape © 2022 Kwiple.com
Math The most important businesses in the world used to be extractive (Shell, ExxonMobil) or industrial (Ford, Mitsubishi).  Now, they are financial (BlackRock, JP Morgan) or digital (Google, Facebook).  Companies that valued maths have given way to companies for whom maths permeates everything: it is the essence of their product. And so they have to hire in that image, which in turn incentivises the generation below to choose their educational path accordingly. The result is a brilliant but narrow over-class, who allow their super-facility in one academic discipline to colour their wider worldview. The very universality of maths encourages them to range with dangerous confidence outside their domain. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, October 20, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Math People don't do mathematics because it's useful. They do it because it's interesting. Paul Lockhart, Meassurement © 2017 Kwiple.com
Math Philosophy is written in this grand book — I mean the universe —  which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and  interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth. Galileo Galilei © 2022 Kwiple.com
Math Proof makes insight portable. Jordan Ellenberg, Shape © 2022 Kwiple.com
Math A really important and in some ways underpublished fact about math is that math is very hard. We sometimes conceal this fact from our students, with the idea that we're doing them a favor. It's just the opposite. … When we say the lesson at hand is “easy” or “simple,” and it manifestly isn't, we are telling the student that the difficulty isn't with mathematics, it's with them. And they will believe us. … “If I didn't get this and it was easy,” they'll say, “why bother trying to understand something hard!” Jordan Ellenberg, Shape © 2022 Kwiple.com
Math The solution to a math problem is not a number; it's an argument, a proof. We're trying to create these little poems of pure reason. Of course, like any other form of poetry, we want our work to be beautiful as well as meaningful. Mathematics is the art of explanation, and consequently, it is difficult, frustrating, and deeply satisfying. Paul Lockhart, Meassurement © 2017 Kwiple.com
Math Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve its sales. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time © 2022 Kwiple.com
Math Think of math as a huge boulder we make everybody pull, without assessing what all this pain achieves. So why require it, without alternatives or exceptions? Thus far I haven't found a compelling answer. Andrew Hacker, “Is Algebra Necessary?” © 2016 Kwiple.com
Math We constructed an infinite sequence of increasingly better approximations, and there was enough of a pattern in those approximations that we could tell where they were heading. In other words, an infinite sequence of lies with a pattern  can tell us the truth. It is arguable that this is the single greatest idea the human race has ever had. Paul Lockhart, in Meassurement, commenting on the method of exhaustion, which lets us make exact measurements using an infinite series of approximations  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Math 1. Wonderful THEOREMS 2. Beautiful PROOFS 3. Great APPLICATIONS David Acheson, 1089 and All That © 2020 Kwiple.com
Problem solving Mathematics is a useful tool for social science. In the actual solution of social problems, however, goals and intentions are the dominant factors. Albert Einstein © 2017 Kwiple.com
Public discourse I don't debate. There are too many debates. Too much Word, not enough Excel. Hans Rosling © 2017 Kwiple.com
Punt returners say Twenty-eight percent. John von Neumann, responding when asked how much of mathematics did he know © 2020 Kwiple.com
Resisters say Alt facts are √ −1  Placard, NYC Science March, Earth Day, April 22, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say I came for the pi  Placard, NYC Science March, Earth Day, April 22, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say pi and e are all the irrationality we need Placard, Berlin Science March, Earth Day, April 22, 2017  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Selfie I didn't major in math. I majored in miracles, and I still believe in them. Mike Huckabee © 2015 Kwiple.com
Simplicity Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Attributed to Albert Einstein, but more likely a paraphrase  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Snapshot Erdös himself, though raised in a Jewish family, had no use for religion. He called God “The Supreme Fascist,” and once remarked, on visiting Notre Dame, that the campus was very charming but there were too many plus signs. Paul Erdös, the mathematician, portrayed by Jordan Ellenberg in Shape © 2022 Kwiple.com
Social media  As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1. Godwin's law © 2017 Kwiple.com
 
Sports Every kid at Alabama is better than Nick Saban at football. He just knows how to win better than anyone on the planet. Will Frazer, coach of Gainesville, Florida's Buchholz High School math team, winner of 13 of the last 14 national high school math championships, noting that some of his students are better at math than he is © 2022 Kwiple.com