Calculation quotes

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Edward_Emil_David

Software Risks

“There are good reasons why software tasks that include novel concepts involve not only uncalculated but also uncalculable risks.”
Keywords: Reason_quotes Software_quotes Innovation_quotes Calculation_quotes Risk_quotes Task_quotes Novel_quotes Concept_quotes Uncalculable_quotes

Richard_Feynman

Same Circumstances

“Philosophers have said that if the same circumstances don't always produce the same results, predictions are impossible and science will collapse. Here is a circumstance — identical photons are always coming down in the same direction to the piece of glass — that produces different results. We cannot predict whether a given photon will arrive at A or B. All we can predict is that out of 100 photons that come down, an average of 4 will be reflected by the front surface. Does this mean that physics, a science of great exactitude, has been reduced to calculating only the probability of an event, and not predicting exactly what will happen? Yes. That's a retreat, but that's the way it is: Nature permits us to calculate only probabilities. Yet science has not collapsed.”
  • Source: Feynman, R. P. (1983). QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Page 19.
Keywords: Philosophy_quotes Circumstance_quotes Repeatability_quotes Prediction_quotes Science_quotes Impossibility_quotes Collapse_quotes Photon_quotes Glass_quotes Result_quotes Materialism_quotes Causality_quotes Calculation_quotes Probability_quotes Produce_quotes Same_quotes Circumstance_quotes Identical_quotes Direction_quotes Average_quotes Reflect_quotes Surface_quotes Physics_quotes Exactitude_quotes Reduce_quotes

Henry_Ford

Charity

“Why should there by any necessity for almsgiving in a civilized community? It is not the charitable mind to which I object. Heaven forbid that we should ever grow cold toward a fellow creature in need. Human sympathy is too fine for the cool, calculating attitude to take its place. One can name very few great advances that did not have human sympathy behind them. It is in order to help people that every notable service is undertaken. The trouble is that we have been using this great, fine motive force for ends too small. If human sympathy prompts us to feed the hungry, why should it not give the larger desire – to make hunger in our midst impossible? If we have sympathy enough for people to help them out of their troubles, surely we ought to have sympathy enough to keep them out.”
  • Source: Henry Ford. A book. Entitled My Life and Work. Written by Henry Ford in collaboration with Samuel Crowther. Published 1922, Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Chapter XV.
Keywords: Alms_quotes Charity_quotes Civilization_quotes Community_quotes Society_quotes Poverty_quotes Empathy_quotes Need_quotes Sympathy_quotes Calculation_quotes Progress_quotes Help_quotes Service_quotes Action_quotes Trouble_quotes Motivation_quotes Force_quotes Small_quotes Large_quotes Hunger_quotes Desire_quotes Impossibility_quotes Prevent_quotes Mind_quotes Heaven_quotes Forbid_quotes Grow_quotes Cold_quotes Creature_quotes Human_quotes Cool_quotes Attitude_quotes Advance_quotes People_quotes Notable_quotes Undertake_quotes Feed_quotes

Thomas_Gold

Knowledge Rules

“In no subject is there a rule, compliance with which will lead to new knowledge or better understanding. Skilful observations, ingenious ideas, cunning tricks, daring suggestions, laborious calculations, all these may be required to advance a subject. Occasionally the conventional approach in a subject has to be studiously followed; on other occasions it has to be ruthlessly disregarded. Which of these methods, or in what order they should be employed is generally unpredictable. Analogies drawn from the history of science are frequently claimed to be a guide; but, as with forecasting the next game of roulette, the existence of the best analogy to the present is no guide whatever to the future. The most valuable lesson to be learnt from the history of scientific progress is how misleading and strangling such analogies have been, and how success has come to those who ignored them.”
  • Source: Thomas Gold, 'Cosmology', in Arthur Beer (ed.), Vistas in Astronomy (1956), Vol. 2, 1722.
Keywords: Rule_quotes Subject_quotes Compliance_quotes Knowledge_quotes Understanding_quotes Skill_quotes Observation_quotes Idea_quotes Trick_quotes Courage_quotes Labor_quotes Status_Quo_quotes Creativity_quotes Prediction_quotes Analogy_quotes History_quotes Science_quotes Game_quotes Success_quotes Ingenious_quotes Cunning_quotes Daring_quotes Suggest_quotes Calculation_quotes Conventional_quotes Approach_quotes Order_quotes Follow_quotes Ruthless_quotes Disregard_quotes Method_quotes Unpredictable_quotes Guide_quotes Forecast_quotes Roulette_quotes Existence_quotes Present_quotes Future_quotes Value_quotes Learn_quotes Progress_quotes Mislead_quotes Strangle_quotes Ignore_quotes

Pierre-Simon_Laplace

System of Nature

“The present state of the system of nature is evidently a consequence of what it was in the preceding moment, and if we conceive of an intelligence that at a given instant comprehends all the relations of the entities of this universe, it could state the respective position, motions, and general affects of all these entities at any time in the past or future. Physical astronomy, the branch of knowledge that does the greatest honor to the human mind, gives us an idea, albeit imperfect, of what such an intelligence would be. The simplicity of the law by which the celestial bodies move, and the relations of their masses and distances, permit analysis to follow their motions up to a certain point; and in order to determine the state of the system of these great bodies in past or future centuries, it suffices for the mathematician that their position and their velocity be given by observation for any moment in time. Man owes that advantage to the power of the instrument he employs, and to the small number of relations that it embraces in its calculations. But ignorance of the different causes involved in the production of events, as well as their complexity, taken together with the imperfection of analysis, prevents our reaching the same certainty about the vast majority of phenomena. Thus there are things that are uncertain for us, things more or less probable, and we seek to compensate for the impossibility of knowing them by determining their different degrees of likelihood. So it was that we owe to the weakness of the human mind one of the most delicate and ingenious of mathematical theories, the science of chance or probability.”
  • Source: Pierre-Simon Laplace, 'Recherches, 1º, sur l'Intégration des Équations Différentielles aux Différences Finies, et sur leur Usage dans la Théorie des Hasards' (1773, published 1776). In Oeuvres complètes de Laplace, 14 Vols. (1843-1912), Vol. 8, 144-5, trans. Charles Coulston Gillispie, Pierre-Simon Laplace 1749-1827: A Life in Exact Science (1997), 26.
Keywords: State_quotes Present_quotes System_quotes Nature_quotes Consequence_quotes Moment_quotes Precede_quotes Conceive_quotes Intelligence_quotes Instant_quotes Comprehension_quotes Relationship_quotes Universe_quotes Position_quotes Motion_quotes Causality_quotes Time_quotes Past_quotes Future_quotes Astronomy_quotes Knowledge_quotes Humanity_quotes Mind_quotes Idea_quotes Imperfect_quotes Law_quotes Celestial_quotes Body_quotes Mass_quotes Distance_quotes Analysis_quotes Determine_quotes Century_quotes Mathematics_quotes Velocity_quotes Observation_quotes Advantage_quotes Power_quotes Instrument_quotes Calculation_quotes Ignorance_quotes Cause_quotes Production_quotes Event_quotes Complexity_quotes Certainty_quotes Majority_quotes Phenomena_quotes Probability_quotes Impossibility_quotes Likelihood_quotes Weakness_quotes Theory_quotes Chance_quotes

N_David_Mermin

Shut Up and Calculate

“I'm one of the uncomfortable ones. If I were forced to sum up in one sentence what the Copenhagen interpretation says to me, it would be 'Shut up and calculate!' But I won't shut up. I would rather celebrate the strangeness of quantum theory than deny it, because I believe it still has interesting things to teach us about how certain powerful but flawed verbal and mental tools we once took for granted continue to infect our thinking in subtly hidden ways.”
  • Source: What's Wrong with this Pillow? by N. David Mermin, Cornell University, Physics Today, volume 42, issure 4, April 1989, page 9, doi:10.1063/1.2810963
Keywords: Shut_Up_quotes Copenhagen_quotes Interpretation_quotes Calculation_quotes Curiosity_quotes Uncomfortable_quotes Force_quotes Free_Speech_quotes Celebrate_quotes Strange_quotes Quantum_quotes Theory_quotes Deny_quotes Belief_quotes Interesting_quotes Teaching_quotes Learning_quotes Power_quotes Flaw_quotes Verbal_quotes Mental_quotes Tool_quotes Grant_quotes Infect_quotes Thinking_quotes Hiding_quotes

Albert_Speer

Incalculable Consequences

“How incalculable the consequences were! The superficiality of my attitude made the fundamental error all the worse.”
  • Source: From the book "Inside the Third Reich" by Albert Speer, published 1970 by Simon and Schuster, ISBN 978-0-684-82949-4. Chapter 2, page 20.
Keywords: Incalculable_quotes Calculation_quotes Consequence_quotes Superficial_quotes Attitude_quotes Fundamental_quotes Error_quotes Worse_quotes

Max_Tegmark

Mathematical Reality

“Many of my physics colleagues will say that mathematics describes our physical reality, at least in some approximate sense. I go further and argue that it actually is our physical reality because I'm arguing that our physical world doesn't just have some mathematical properties, but it has only mathematical properties.”
  • Source: Youtube The Great Math Mystery - Documentary posted by Aerospace Engineering 2017-03-03.
Keywords: Physics_quotes Colleague_quotes Mathematics_quotes Physical_quotes Reality_quotes Approximation_quotes Sense_quotes Argue_quotes Actual_quotes World_quotes Property_quotes Computation_quotes Calculation_quotes Description_quotes

William_Whewell

Hypothesis Should Foretell

“The hypotheses which we accept ought to explain phenomena which we have observed. But they ought to do more than this; our hypotheses ought to foretell phenomena which have not yet been observed; ... because if the rule prevails, it includes all cases; and will determine them all, if we can only calculate its real consequences. Hence it will predict the results of new combinations, as well as explain the appearances which have occurred in old ones. And that it does this with certainty and correctness, is one mode in which the hypothesis is to be verified as right and useful.”
Keywords: Hypothesis_quotes Acceptance_quotes Explanation_quotes Foretell_quotes Phenomena_quotes Observation_quotes Rule_quotes Prevail_quotes Case_quotes Determine_quotes Calculation_quotes Consequence_quotes Prediction_quotes Result_quotes Combination_quotes Appearance_quotes Occur_quotes Old_quotes Certainty_quotes Correctness_quotes Mode_quotes Verification_quotes Right_quotes Usefulness_quotes

Shoshana_Zuboff

Automated Evaluation

“The system automatically computed efficiency ratings for each worker by comparing the amount of time it took to complete a job had been priced. Such calculations with the amount of time for which it could have been generated only by a computer system, since 'we could never have enough clerks to compute these kinds of ratios.' The ratings were considered management information and were not accessible to the craftworkers. Many foremen cautioned against taking the ratings at face value. The most experienced craftsperson frequently was loaded with the most difficult assignments. That individual might show the worst efficiency rating simply because his or her assignments were the most complex and required more than the assigned time.”
  • Source: Zuboff, S. (1988). In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power. New York, NY: Basic Books, p. 331. ISBN:0465032125.
Keywords: System_quotes Automation_quotes Evaluation_quotes Efficiency_quotes Rating_quotes Time_quotes Calculation_quotes Computer_quotes Management_quotes Information_quotes Accessibility_quotes Transparency_quotes Worker_quotes Craft_quotes Supervision_quotes Surveillance_quotes Experience_quotes Difficulty_quotes Assignment_quotes Individuality_quotes Complexity_quotes Requirements_quotes Computation_quotes Compare_quotes Amount_quotes Job_quotes Price_quotes Clerk_quotes Ratio_quotes Craftworker_quotes Foremen_quotes Face_quotes Value_quotes Frequent_quotes Load_quotes Worse_quotes
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