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Quotes from Mathematical Methods in Science — George Pólya

1887–1985 Hungary

← All quotes by George Pólya

10 quotes

As for the human race, so for the human child.

Mathematical Methods in Science (1977)

In those days editions did not run to thousands or hundreds of thousands of copies as modern books—especially, bad books—do.

Mathematical Methods in Science (1977)

Good approximations often lead to better ones.

Mathematical Methods in Science (1977)

Simplicity is worth buying if we do not have to pay too great a loss of precision for it.

Mathematical Methods in Science (1977)

If you cannot solve the proposed problem, try to solve first a simpler related problem.

Mathematical Methods in Science (1977)

Even if without the Scot's proverbial thrift, the difficulty of solving differential equations is an incentive to using them parsimoniously.

Mathematical Methods in Science (1977)

Facing any part of the observable reality, we are never in possession of complete knowledge, nor in a state of complete ignorance, although usually much closer to the latter state.

Mathematical Methods in Science (1977)

Mathematics succeeds in dealing with tangible reality by being conceptual. We cannot cope with the full physical complexity; we must idealize.

Mathematical Methods in Science (1977)

We wish to see... the typical attitude of the scientist who uses mathematics to understand the world around us. ...In the solution of a problem ...there are typically three phases.

Mathematical Methods in Science (1977)

Why should the typical student be interested in those wretched triangles? ...He is to be brought to see that without the knowledge of triangles there is not trigonometry; that without trigonometry we put back the clock millennia to Standard Darkness Time and antedate the Greeks.

Mathematical Methods in Science (1977)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: George Pólya (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.