Gratis
FREE, Gratis, & For NOTHING
Don't say I never gave you anything: What follows is my version of what used to be done with pen, paper, scotch tape, & office doors.--- You're welcome :)
Quotables: Exemplars Excellently Execute Erudition
"Mathematics is not about numbers, equations, computations, or algorithms: it is about understanding." -- William Thurston
"Thinking must never submit itself, neither to a dogma, nor to a party, nor to a passion, nor to an interest, nor to a preconceived idea, nor to whatever it may be, if not to facts themselves, because, for it, to submit would be to cease to be." -- Henri Poincaré
"This, therefore, is mathematics: she reminds you of the invisible form of the soul: she gives light to her own discoveries; she awakens the mind and purifies the intellect; she brings lingt to our intrinsic ideas; she abolishes oblivion which are ours by birth." -- Proculus [ As quoted by M. Klein, in Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times.]
I know that I am mortal by nature and ephemeral, but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies. I no longer touch earth with my feet. I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia." -- Claudius Ptolemy [Almagest]
"If I only had the theorems! Then I should find the proofs easily enough." -- Bernhard Riemann.
"The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unatainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury --- have always seemed to me contemptible." --- Albert Einstein.
Remarkables: Funny Things Overheard on the Way to Mathematics Seminar Dinners.
"This is the kind of thing that proves itself."
"I have forgotten the statement of the theorem but I remember the proof."
"Vector fields on manifolds are complicated."
"When you possess something you can do what you want with it."
"Conjecture: You will get a job if you solve the following open problem."
"... I don't see any experts in the audience, so it won't matter anyway."
"There are a bunch of words on the board. Mostly I am going to ignore, but one should be aware of them..."
"Can you imagine a mathematician writing Moby Dick? 'Let my name be Ishmel, let the captain's name be Ahab, let the boat's name be Pequod, and let the whale's name be as given in the title." -- Andy Rooney [As quoted by Barry A Cipra in the Mathematical Intelligencier Vol. 10]
Elementals: Song, Spirit, & Superposition
[Marian Anderson] Deep River
[Bessie Smith] Backwater Blues
[Albert King] Call It Stormy Monday
[Billie Holiday] Strange Fruit
[Oscar Peterson] Hymn to Freedom
[John Coltrane] My Favorite Things
[James Brown] Mind Power
[Jimi Hendrix] Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
[Fela Kuti] Noise for Vendor Mouth
[Bob Marley] War
[Yasin Bey] Fear Not of Man
Poetry & Prose: The Turning Of The Wheel Within The Wheel
"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." -- African Proverb
"Dye mon, gen mon." Behind the mountains, more mountains. – Haitian proverb
"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." --- Rumi
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, --- that is all. Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." --- John Keats
"Quantitatively literate citizens need to know more than formulas and equations. They need a predisposition to look at the world through mathematical eyes, to see the benefits (and risks) of thinking quantitatively about commonplace issues, and to approach complex problems with confidence in the value of careful reasoning. Quantitative literacy empowers people by giving them tools to think for themselves, to ask intelligent questions of experts, and to confront authority confidently." --Lynn Steen, [Mathematics and Democracy]
"Are you lonely sometimes? This is good. Gives you time to think. Do you feel misunderstood? Wonderful. Gives you a reason to pursue definitions. Do you feel unloved? Great. Gives you a reason to sympathize with other endangered species. Makes you know you have to reach out, reach up, reach a little further. Reach again and grab hold of yourself." -- Nikki Giovanni
"IF IT WERE not for our conception of weights and measures we would stand in awe of the firefly as we do before the sun. There is neither religion nor science beyond beauty."--- Kahlil Gibran. [Sand and Foam]
"Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe they deserve it." -- James Baldwin
Woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom
I said I woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom
Well I woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom
Hallelu, hallelu, Hallelu, Hallelu, hallelujah
It ain't no harm in keep'n' your mind
--Your mind stayed on freedom
Ain't no harm in keep'n' your mind
Your mind stayed on freedom
It ain't no harm in keeping your mind stayed on freedom
Hallelu, hallelu, hallelu, hallelu, hallelujah
Walking and talking with my mind
My mind stayed on freedom
Singing and praying with my mind
My mind stayed on freedom
Hallelu, hallelu, halleu, hallelu, hallelujah
You've got to walk, walk
You've got to walk, walk
You've got to walk with your mind on freedom
You've got to talk, talk
You've got to talk, talk
You've got to talk with your mind on freedom
Oh, oh, oh you got to walk walk, talk talk --- Freedom Fighters [Freedom Song]
[Ars Poetica #100: I Believe] by Elizabeth Alexander
[The Secular Masque] by John Dryden
[The Rubaiyat] by Omar Khayamm
[The Prophet] by Kahlil Gibran
[Ozymandias] by Percy Bysshe Shelley
[Jazzonia] by Langston Hughes
[Variations on a theme by Elizabeth Bishop] by John Murillo
[An Ante-Bellum Sermon] by Paul Laurence Dunbar
[The Black Christ] by Countee Cullen
[Holy Sonnet XIV] by John Donne
[When I am Among the Trees] by Mary Oliver
[The Eagle] by Lord Alfred Tennyson
[Let My Country Awake] by Rabindranath Tagore
[Psalm 104] by King David
Clickable: Links
[Andy Rooney] [Math problems and problems in math: a little self-deprecating humor.]
[Math Theorems] [List (incomplete) of solved math problems. The boundary between the known & the unkonwn is about conversation.]
[Hilbert's Problems][Lecture delivered before the international congress of mathematicians, A.D.1900, by David Hilbert.]
[On the Hypotheses which lie at the Bases of Geometry][Riemannian geometry born, A.D. 1854, by Bernhard Riemann.]
[A Comparative Review of Recent Researches in Geometry][Erlangen Program born, A.D 1872, by Felix Klein.]
[Thurston's Problems][Geometrization Conjecture born, A.D 1982, by William Thurston.]
[Million Dollar Problems] [Millennium Problems: solve one, go for the money & the fame.]
[Terrence Tao's Blog] [A fount of mathematical conversation & w/ a full-blown mathematics rockstar into the bargain.]
[History of Mathematics][MacTutor Index: incomplete but not completely terrible.]
[Mathematical Genealogy][More evidence math is an intimately human endeavor: circa~ 900's A.D, Abu Sahl 'Isa ibn Yahya al-Masihi is the earliest known member of my mathematical family tree-- also evidence that time is not linear. :D]
[Algorithm for Discovery][I like this. I would modify, "read, not too much," to something like: "read as much as you can." Perhaps this better describes what "too much" means-- also shifts emphasis away from "do not read much." :D]