Mathematicians call it “the arithmetic of congruences.” You can think of it as clock arithmetic. Temporarily replace the 12 on a clock face with 0. The 12 hours of the clock now read 0, 1, 2, 3, … up to 11. If the time is eight o’clock, and you add 9 hours, what do you get? Well, you get five o’clock. So in this arithmetic, 8 + 9 = 5; or, as mathematicians say, 8 + 9 ≡ 5 (mod 12), pronounced “eight plus nine is congruent to five, modulo twelve. John Derbyshire
Mathematics expresses values that reflect the cosmos, including orderliness, balance, harmony, logic, and abstract beauty.
-
Deepak Chopra
In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.
-
Fran Lebowitz
I had a polynomial once. My doctor removed it.
-
Michael Grant
I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys--but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!
-
Richard Feynman
What comes, is called.
-
Ki Longfellow
More Quotes By John Derbyshire
Books, in the plural lose their solidity of substance and become a gas, filling all available space.
I preach that odd defiant melancholy that sees the dreadful loneliness of the human soul and the pitiful disaster of human life as ever redeemable and redeemed by compassion, friendship and love.
Our political system is now run by the Big People for their own interests. If they ever deign to notice the Little People, it is with disdain and contempt.
Ninety percent of paid work is time-wasting crap. The world gets by on the other ten.
The ordinary modes of human thinking are magical, religious, social, and personal. We want our wishes to come true; we want the universe to care about us; we want the approval of those around us; we want to get even with that s.o.b. who insulted...
