In physical science a first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it. I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.
The mythology around colorblindness leads people to imagine that if poor kids of color are failing or getting locked up in large numbers, it must be something wrong with them. It leads young kids of color to look around and say: "There must be something wrong with me, there must be something wrong with us. Is there something inherent, something different about me, about us as a people, that leads us to fail so often, that leads us to live in these miserable conditions, that leads us to go in and out of prison?"
Our problem right now is that we're so specialized that if the lights go out, there are a huge number of people who are not going to know what to do. But within every dystopia there's a little utopia.
The number one responsibility for each of us is to change ourselves with hope that others will follow.
Throughout history, the really fundamental changes in societies have come about not from the dictates of governments and the results of battles, but through vast numbers of people changing their minds, sometimes only a little bit.
The number of those who do selfless public service and those who serve without expecting any return, should increase. Their sterling qualities should show the way to the people at large. Their life would be a model to show how man should conduct himself in public life.
Higher education is confronting challenges, like the economy is, about the need for a higher number of more adequately trained, more highly educated citizenry.
Numbers tend to give the impression that there's more order in the world than there is.
My tax return in the United States has to be kept on a special computer because their normal computers can't deal with the numbers. So I am constantly getting these notices telling me I haven't paid something when really it is just on the wrong computer.
Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. For, as has been pointed out several times, there is no such thing as a random number– there are only methods to produce random numbers, and a strict arithmetic procedure of course is not such a method.
The presidency has even become a partisan thing. The presidency has been totally politicized and totally made partisan, as evidenced by the IRS going after the Tea Party and any number of other examples I give you.
To me, the biggest surprise is that Google still functions despite the explosion in the number of sites.
It takes these very simple-minded instructions - 'Go fetch a number, add it to this number, put the result there, perceive if it's greater than this other number' - but executes them at a rate of, let's say, 1,000,000 per second. At 1,000,000 per second, the results appear to be magic.
I feel like human beings can't help but destroy, but if our numbers are small we don't destroy as much as we do when our numbers are this huge and out of control. I wonder, what's the carrying capacity for human beings? When do we get to the point when we can't take it anymore, when it becomes too unpleasant to us just to be here because there's too many of us and there's no solitude anymore.
You're going to fall down, but the world doesn't care how many times you fall down, as long as it's one fewer than the numbers of times you get back up.
The ordinary Nigerians have lived as neighbors down the millennia. I was talking about the British who came and merged a whole number of mini states and big states into one unit. But those people were always there, and they always managed to live side by side with their neighbours. So they were not owned or run by one kingdom. It was not practically impossible for these people when they have different languages and religions to be neighbors. So it is that habit of neighbourliness which is destroyed and put under great strain again and again when you have things like massacres.
I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly or even daily scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.
We haven't really had the time yet to pore through all those records in Baghdad. We'll find ample evidence confirming the link, that is the connection if you will between al Qaida and the Iraqi intelligence services. They have worked together on a number of occasions.
I could imagine, some number of years from now, starting my own company. But not yet. Not for a while.
Men lie, women lie, numbers dont