Quotes

"With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk" John von Neumann

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?

That depends a good deal on where you want to get to. Said the Cat.

I don't much care where - Said Alice.

Then it doesn't matter which way you go, said the Cat.” Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

"When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?" John Maynard Keynes, about Bayes’s theorem

Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.

George E. P. Box, in his book on response surface methodology with Norman R. Draper.

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

Albert Einstein, "Geometry and Experience", January 27, 1921

I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important.

Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationship. Linus Torvalds

For me, great algorithms are the poetry of computation. Just like verse, they can be terse, allusive, dense and even mysterious.

But once unlocked, they cast a brilliant new light on some aspect of computing. Francis Sullivan

Nothing is more practical than a good theory. Vapnik

It is more reliable to judge people by analysing their abilities that by glancing at the scoreboard. Or as Bernoulli (KD note - this is a forefather of the law of probability) put it, "One should not appraise human action on the basis of results."

"The Drunkard's Walk": How Randomness Rules Our Lives

Without mathematics we cannot penetrate deeply into philosophy.

Without philosophy we cannot penetrate deeply into mathematics.

Without both we cannot penetrate deeply into anything. Leibniz

All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.

Bruce Lee

C++ wasn't designed to be a nice, pure language, good for teaching students how to program, it was

designed to be a powerful tool for professional programmers solving real problems in diverse domains. The real

world has some rough edges, so it's no surprise there's the occasional scratch marring the finish of the tools the pros rely on.

Scott Meyers

...why doesn't C++ free programmers from tiresome duties like memory management and low-level

pointer manipulations? Because some programmers need those capabilities, and the needs of

real programmers are of paramount importance.

Scott Meyers

"Having a solid base of algorithmic knowledge and technique

is one characteristic that separates the truly skilled programmers from the novices.

With modern computing technology,

you can accomplish some tasks without knowing much about algorithms,

but with a good background in algorithms, you can do much, much more."

— Cormen, Leiserson, Rivers, Stein, "Introduction to Algorithms"

"Ao verificar que um dado programa está muito lento,

uma pessoa prática normalmente pede uma máquina mais rápida ao seu chefe.

[...] Entretanto, o ganho potencial que uma máquina mais rápida pode proporcionar

é tipicamente limitado por um fator de 10, por razões técnicas ou econômicas.

Para obter um ganho maior de desempenho, é preciso buscar melhores algoritmos.

Como veremos adiante, um algoritmo rápido rodando em uma máquina lenta

sempre acaba vencendo para instâncias grandes do problema. Sempre.

(E as instâncias nem precisam ficar muito grandes antes que o algoritmo rápido vença.)"

— S. S. Skiena, "The Algorithm Design Manual"

-Sheldon, why is this letter in the trash?

-Well, there's always the possibility that a trash can spontaneously formed around the letter but Occam's rasor would suggest that someone threw it out.

BBT S01E09

You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to.

Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician.

Sherlock Holmes The Sign of Four

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

George Bernard