i bought a puzzle book called brainmatics by ivan moscovich. well i really really like my purchase! and i even drew out one of the logic puzzles for xinyi over msn. i'm out soon to buy cheese cubes to help me solve it, because i'm that lazy! and it'll strain my brain to contemplate the three-dimensional considerations, so uhm.. CHEESE! YA!
the book opens with two pages of quotes, and maybe they're quotes you can easily scour the internet for, but they're still lovely quotes! so i simply have to re-type some of them here. (oh there's a really good foreword too but it sure is long!)
"imagination is more important than knowledge. knowledge is limited." - albert einstein
einstein on math:
"never before in my life have i troubled myself over anything so much. i have gained enormous respect for mathematics, whose more subtle parts i considered until now, in my ignorance, as pure luxury!"
einstein, in a letter to a friend, 1916
"our experience hitherto justifies us in believing that nature is the realization of the simplest conceivable mathematical ideas. i am convinced that we can discover by means of purely mathematical constructions the concepts and the laws connecting them with each other."
einstein in the herbet spencer lecture at oxford, 1933
^ when i read that, i think of brilliantly folding sunflowers and fibonacci numbers!
accompanying the photograph inlay and text of moscovich's harmonograph:
"beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics." -g.h. hardy
"i do not feel i have wisdom enough yet to love what is ugly." - stendhal
which are such inspiring quotes, if only i had come into possession of this book ten years ago! never too late maybe. anyway getting hard to blog with firefox crashing every five minutes, so, tata! CHEESE!
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