The Personal Website of Mark W. Dawson

Witty Quotes About Science and Math Topics

Math

A first-rate theory predicts; a second-rate theory forbids; and a third-rate theory explains after the event.
— A. J. Kitaigorodskii

A law of conservation of difficulties: there is no easy way to prove a deep result.
— Anonymous

A theory has the alternative of being right or wrong. A model has a third possibility: it may be right but irrelevant.
— Manfred Eigen

An idea which can be used once is a trick. If it can be used more than once it becomes a method.
— George Polya and Gabor Szego

An interesting theorem of mathematics differs from interesting results in other fields because over and above the surpise and beauty of what it says, it has an 'aspect of eternity'; it is always part of an infinite chain of results.
— Leo Zeppen

But don't panic. Base 8 is just like Base 10 really. If you're missing two fingers.
— Tom Lehrer

Daddy, people think really small numbers are easy to work with, but they are not, because really small numbers are really big negative numbers.
— (Eamonn Ryan, age 4, self-proclaimed mathematician).

Decimals have a point.
— Anonymous

Do not worry too much about your difficulties in mathematics, I can assure you that mine are still greater.
— Albert Einstein

Do the math: Count your blessings.
— Anonymous

Do you remember the famous toast, “Here's to pure mathematics — may it never be of use to anybody”.
— Arthur C. Clarke

Every human activity, good or bad, except mathematics, must come to an end.
— Paul Erdos

I advise my students to listen carefully the moment they decide to take no more mathematics courses. They might be able to hear the sound of closing doors.
— James Caballero

I understand mathematics, I just can't do proofs.
— Anonymous

If there is a problem you can't solve, then there is an easier problem you can solve: find it.
— George Polya

It is an error to believe that rigor in a proof is an enemy of simplicity. On the contrary we find it confirmed by numerous examples that the rigorous method is, at the same time, the simpler and the more easily comprehended. The very effort for rigor forces us to find the simpler methods of proof.
— David Hilbert

It is clear that the chief end of mathematical study must be to make the students think.
— John Wesley Young

Logic is invincible, because in order to combat logic it is necessary to use logic.
— Pierre Boatroux;

Math jokes are the first sine of madness.
— Anonymous

Men who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.
— Anonymous

Minus times minus equals plus; The reason for this we won't discuss.
— Anonymous

Natural numbers are better for your health.
— Anonymous

Not everything that counts can be counted. Not everything that can be counted counts.
— Albert Einstein

Polar coordinates aren't just arctic fashions.
— Anonymous

The elegance of a theorem is directly proportional to the number of ideas you can see in it and inversely proportional to the effort it takes to see them.
— George Polya

The number you have dialed is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
— Anonymous

The value of a problem is not so much coming up with the answer as in the ideas and attempted ideas it forces on the would be solver.
— I. N. Herstein

There are no solved problems; there are only problems that are more or less solved.
— Henri Poincare

These days, even the most pure and abstract mathematics is in danger to be applied.
— Anonymous

This is a one-line proof. if we start sufficiently far to the left.
— Anonymous

Three out of every two people are bad at working with fractions.
— Mrs. Barton's 2010 Algebra 1 class

What is a rigorous definition of rigor?
— Anonymous

What is now proved was once only imagined.
— Proverb

What's one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one? I don't know, said Alice. I lost count. She can't do addition, said the Red Queen.
— Lewis Carroll

Nature

I discovered I scream the same way whether I'm about to be devoured by a Great White or if a piece of seaweed touches my foot.
— Kevin James

I just carved my initials into a tree, but only as a warning to other trees.
— Bridger Winegar

Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.
— Lewis Mumford

Screw camping. I don't work 40 hours a week to go pretend I'm homeless during the weekend.
— Mike Vanatta

To put it rather bluntly, I am not the type who wants to go back to the land; I am the type who wants to go back to the hotel.
— Fran Lebowitz

Today I spent some time in nature. This may come as a surprise, but I'm sad to report that it's mostly just rocks and trees.
— Bridger Winegar ‏@bridger_w

Reality

A Zen couch potato is a person who contemplates the nature of televised existence.
— Richard Helm

America is the only country where a significant proportion of the population believes that professional wrestling is real, but the moon landing was faked.
— David Letterman

I hate reality. But where else can you get a good steak dinner?
— Woody Allen

May [this] be the year that we collectively tune out Reality TV and tune into… reality!
— Swami Beyondananda (Steve Bhaerman)

Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
— (attributed to Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner)

Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?
— Groucho Marx

Schooling

A math student's best friend is BOB (the Back Of the Book), but remember that BOB doesn't come to school on test days.
— -Josh Folb

As long as there is algebra, there will be prayer in school.
— Larry Miller

High school is where I learned to fake it until you make it – by wearing a push-up bra.
— Melanie White

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
— Mark Twain

If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylum would be filled with mothers.
— E. W. Howe

Never go out with anyone who remembers high school like it was only yesterday.
— William J. Novak

Statistics

.. surely, God loves the .06 nearly as much as the .05. Can there be any doubt that God views the strength of evidence for or against the null as a fairly continuous function of the magnitude of p?
— Rosnow, R. L., & Rosenthal, R.

…the statistician knows…that in nature there never was a normal distribution, there never was a straight line, yet with normal and linear assumptions, known to be false, he can often derive results which match, to a useful approximation, those found in the real world.
— George Box

3 out of 4 Americans make up 75% of the population.
— Anonymous

42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
— Steven Wright

43% of all statistics are worthless.
— Anonymous

60% of the time, it works every time.
-Brian Fantana

80% of all statistics quoted to prove a point are made up on the spot.
— Anonymous

97.3% of all statistics are made up.
— Anonymous

A statistical analysis, properly conducted, is a delicate dissection of uncertainties, a surgery of suppositions.
— M.J. Moroney

A statistician can have his head in an oven and his feet in ice, and he will say that on the average he feels fine.
— Anonymous

A statistician drowned while crossing a stream that was, on average, 6 inches deep.
— Anonymous

A statistician is a person who draws a mathematically precise line from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone conclusion.
— Anonymous

All generalizations are false, including this one.
— Mark Twain

Are statisticians normal or are they transformable? .
— Anonymous

Causal interpretation of the results of regression analysis of observational data is a risky business. The responsibility rests entirely on the shoulders of the researcher, because the shoulders of the statistical technique cannot carry such strong inferences.
— Jan de Leeuw

Conducting data analysis is like drinking a fine wine. It is important to swirl and sniff the wine, to unpack the complex bouquet and to appreciate the experience. Gulping the wine doesn’t work.
— Daniel B. Wright

Death is 99 per cent fatal to laboratory rats.
— Anonymous

Definition of Statistics: The science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures.
— Evan Esar

Did you know that 87.166253% of all statistics claim a precision of results that is not justified by the method employed?
— Anonymous

Do not put your faith in what statistics say until you have carefully considered what they do not say.
— William W. Watt

Everybody believes in the exponential law of errors [i.e., the Normal distribution]: the experimenters, because they think it can be proved by mathematics; and the mathematicians, because they believe it has been established by observation.
— Whittaker, E. T. and Robinson

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.
— Mark Twain

Fett's Law: Never replicate a successful experiment.
— Anonymous

Figures don't lie, but liars’ figure.
— Samuel Clemens (alias Mark Twain)

Five out of four people have trouble with fractions.
— Steven Wright

How many pizzas are consumed each year in the United States? How many words have you spoken in your life? How many different people’s names appear in the New York Times each year? How many watermelons would fit inside the U.S. Capitol building? What is the volume of all the human blood in the world?
— John A. Paulos

I abhor averages.  I like the individual case.  A man may have six meals one day and none the next, making an average of three meals per day, but that is not a good way to live.
— Louis D. Brandeis

I can prove anything by statistics except the truth.
— George Canning

I could prove God statistically.  Take the human body alone — the chances that all the functions of an individual would just happen is a statistical monstrosity.
— George Gallup

If there is a 50/50 chance that something can go wrong, then 9 times out of ten times it will.
— Anonymous

In earlier times, they had no statistics, and so they had to fall back on lies.
— Stephen Leacock

In God we trust. All others must bring data.
— W. Edwards Deming

It is proven that the celebration of birthdays is healthy. Statistics show that those people who celebrate the most birthdays become the oldest.
— Anonymous

It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.
— George Bernard Shaw

Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment.
— Jean Baudrillard

Most people use statistics the way a drunk uses a lamp post, more for support than enlightenment.
— Anonymous

Smoking is a leading cause of statistics.
— Anonymous

Statistically speaking, in China, even if you are a one in a million kind of guy, there are a thousand more just like you.
— Anonymous

Statisticians, like artists, have the bad habit of falling in love with their models.
— George Box

Statistics are no substitute for judgment.
— Henry Clay

Statistics is the art of never having to say you're wrong. Variance is what any two statisticians are at.
— C.J. Bradfield

Statistics may be defined as a body of methods for making wise decisions in the face of uncertainty.
— W.A. Wallis

Statistics means never having to say you're certain.
— Anonymous

Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.
— Zig Ziglar

Statistics: the mathematical theory of ignorance.
— Morris Kline

The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you.
— Rita Mae Brown

The weatherman is never wrong. Suppose he says that there's an 80% chance of rain. If it rains, the 80% chance came up; if it doesn't, the 20% chance came up! .
— Saul Barron

There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.
— Rex Stout

Those who ignore Statistics are condemned to reinvent it.
— Brad Efron

To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more than asking him to perform a post-mortem examination: he may be able to say what the experiment died of.
— Ronald Fisher

Torture numbers, and they'll confess to anything.
— Gregg Easterbrook

We are drowning in information and starving for knowledge.
— Rutherford D. Roger

We are just statistics, born to consume resources.
— Horace

While the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty.  You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will be up to, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to.  Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant.  So says the statistician.
— Arthur Conan Doyle

You cannot feed the hungry on statistics.
— Heinrich Heine

Technology

A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
— Emo Philips

All I have to do to empty shopping carts online is click a button. It's way easier than the grocery store, where I have to knock them over.
— Bridger Winegar

Are you, or is someone you know, a gadget freak? If so, you doubtless know that Wednesday was iPhone 5 day, the day Apple unveiled its latest way for people to avoid actually speaking to or even looking at whoever they’re with.
— Paul Krugman, NY Times

At a restaurant I thought a family was praying at the table but then I realized they were all texting.
— Abbi Crutchfield

AT&T to wed T-Mobile. Following the ceremony there will be no reception.
— Richard Lerner

Before the Internet, if someone disappeared, it meant you should go looking for them. Now it means they got a life.
— Ashish Chauhan

Buying the right computer and getting it to work properly is no more complicated than building a nuclear reactor from wristwatch parts in a darkened room using only your teeth.
— Dave Barry

Cars will soon have the Internet on the dashboard. I worry that this will distract me from my texting.
— Andy Borowitz

Compulsive texting gives me the willies. It’s just another form of butt scratching.
— Garrison Keillor

Each time I shut my computer down, I throw my head back in maniacal laughter and scream Fool! I was only using you!
— Bridger Winegar

Facebook's new relationship status option: No longer able to interact with actual people.
— Andy Borowitz

Getting your news from Twitter is like asking a cat for directions.
— Andy Borowitz

Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day. Give a man Twitter, and he will forget to eat and starve to death.
— Andy Borowitz

Google is really powerful. Type in the question Is there a God? and it tells you, THERE IS NOW.
— Greg Tamblyn

I don't even know what Java is, but I let it do whatever it wants to my computer. I feel like a slut.
— Dave Barry

I have a lifetime’s worth of technical expertise. I wasn’t born – my mother simply chose ‘eject child’ from the special menu.
— Unknown Author

I will vote for the first candidate who promises to use nuclear missiles against LinkedIn.
— Dave Barry

I'd rather check my Facebook than face my checkbook.
— Craig Coelho

In a perfect world, answering machines would come with a Get to the point button.
— Jason Love

In the old days, we painstakingly copied our emails onto paper, put a stamp on them and mailed them to arrive 4 to 5 days later. We also churned our own butter and used our phones for talking.
— Peter Sagal

It used to be that people could be painfully boring in private. Facebook changed all that.
— Andy Borowitz

I've invented Twofacebook, the antisocial network. You start being friends w/entire world & defriend people one by one.
— Andy Borowitz

My brother doesn’t have to give parental advice to his kid anymore. His kid’s phone has an app for that.
— Anonymous

My computer could be more encouraging. You know, instead of invalid password, why not something like, Ooooh, you're so close!?
— Lisa Porter

My daughter is way more excited about the iPhone upgrade than she was about — for example. — her own birth.
— Dave Barry

My life is now a constant assessment of whether what's happening in real life is more entertaining than what's happening on my phone.
— Damien Fahey

My mom actually believes I'm dating a girl named Siri.
— Kelkulus

Our society will never go entirely paperless. There’s always the bathroom.
— Anonymous

Rapper Zapper App: remote control that instantly short circuits anything operating way too loud: hip hop from giant speakers in cars, cell phones of clueless idiots with booming voices, and all Harley Davidson motorcycles.
— Greg Tamblyn

Technology has really changed parenting. There’s a whole generation of kids whose only childhood memory of their dad will be his bald spot bent over a Blackberry.
— Kate Deimling

Thanks to the Internet, people we might have only suspected of being idiots can now give us ample evidence.
— Andy Borowitz

The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, he was the genius.
— Sid Caesar

The human brain is an evolutionary marvel. it starts working before you're born, and never stops until you try to learn some new software.
— Greg Tamblyn

The last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it.
— The Wall St. Journal, on the unveiling of Apple’s iPad

The population of earth has reached 7 billion people, every single one of whom send you irritating emails to join something called LinkedIn.
— Dave Barry

The problem with quotes on the internet is you can never be certain they're authentic.
— Abraham Lincoln

The Web may be a technological marvel, but to most people who use it for work, it functions like an old-fashioned hamster wheel, except at Internet speed.
— David Carr

To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.
— Paul Ehrlich

To people who make moving ads that block the view of websites: Not only will we not buy from you, but we want shrews to eat your liver.
— Dave Barry

Toyota has announced it will start integrating Microsoft technology into their vehicles. It’s perfect for the person who wants a car that crashes every ten minutes.
— Conan O’Brien

Twitter is currently valued at $8 billion, or $1 for every hour it has wasted.
— Andy Borowitz

User is the word used by the computer professional when they mean idiot.
— Dave Barry

We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.
— Lily Tomlin

We had the Greatest Generation, the Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y, and now: Generation Text.
— Greg Tamblyn

We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.
— Professor Robert Silensky

What did people do when they went to the bathroom before smart phones?
— Aaron Cobra Mervis

What I need is a search engine that, no matter what I type in, comes back with GO BACK TO WORK.
— Dave Barry

Time

I am so busy doing nothing that the idea of doing anything — which as you know, always leads to something — cuts into the nothing and then forces me to have to drop everything.
— Jerry Seinfeld

It’s Daylight Savings Time! Why does it happen on the weekend? If you ask me, if we're gonna lose an hour it should happen Monday at 2 PM.
— Ellen DeGeneres

Just as I predicted, it is Thursday.
— Bridger Winegar

My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.
— Charles Kettering

The days of the digital watch are numbered.
— Tom Stoppard

You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.
— Dave Barry

Weather

It's so obvious The Weather Channel is pro hurricane. Fair and balanced my ass.
— Jim Gaffigan

Maybe it’s not global warming. Maybe it’s just planetary menopause.
— Greg Tamblyn

The city is under siege. Sandy is pretty furious at Atlantic City. She must have lost a bet or something.
— Thomas Foley, chief of emergency management in Atlantic City, on Hurricane Sandy

Today is the official beginning of shorts weather in Canada and local ERs are swamped as thousands are admitted with temporary blindness.
— Oblivia

TV meteorologists: You can stop reporting the dew point. We don't know what that is.
— Just Bill ‏

Weathermen merely forecast rain to keep everyone else off the golf course.
— Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm

Science

A person who isn’t outraged on first hearing about quantum theory doesn’t understand what has been said.
— Neils Bohr

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
— Ernest Rutherford, Nobel Prize winner in chemistry

Apparently, there are three levels of brain activity. Level 1 is the lowest level — the amount of concentration required to, say, delete emails or serve in congress.
— Bruce Cameron

Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.
— Wernher von Braun

Being a scientist is like doing a jigsaw puzzle in a snowstorm at night, with some pieces missing, and with no idea what the finished picture looks like.
— Anonymous scientist

Biologically speaking, if something bites you, it is more likely to be female.
— Desmond Morris

Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
— Isaac Asimov

Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking.
— Dave Barry

Electricity is really just organized lightning.
— George Carlin

Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases:.
(1)  It's completely impossible.
(2)  It's possible, but it's not worth doing.
(3)  I said it was a good idea all along.
— Arthur C. Clarke

God not only plays dice; he throws them in the corner where you can't see them.
— Stephen Hawking

I don't believe in astrology; I'm a Sagittarian and we're skeptical.
— Arthur C. Clarke

I had trouble with physics in college. When I signed up, I thought it said psychics.
— Greg Tamblyn

I see they found out the universe is 80 million years older than we thought. It's also been lying about its weight.
— Bill Maher ‏

I won't be impressed with science until I can download a waffle.
— Sean Gabay

If I were ever abducted by aliens, the first thing I’d ask is whether they came from a planet where people also deny science.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

If math was taught like science in Kansas, Texas, and Tennessee, then 2+2=5 would be a competing theory.
— Anonymous

If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research.
— Albert Einstein

I'm human; never been to space. Monkeys aren't human; have been to space. That's the gist of my lawsuit against NASA.
— Mike Vanatta

I'm not sure if I was the first man in space or the last dog.
— Yuri Gagarin

In physics, you don't have to go around making trouble for yourself. Nature does it for you.
— Frank Wilczek

Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage.
— Isaac Asimov

It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.
— Konrad Lorenz

Magnetism, as you recall from physics class, is a powerful force that causes certain items to be attracted to refrigerators.
— Dave Barry

Maybe this world is another planet's hell.
— Aldous Huxley

My knowledge of the universe is that if I write stupid jokes, the universe gives me a really nice house and great meals. I do not believe mankind will ever develop a formula to explain this.
— Joel Klein

My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.
— Steven Wright

NASA scientists announced the discovery of 50 new planets, among them what they’re calling Super Earth. It’s indistinguishable from regular earth until it removes its glasses.
— Peter Sagal

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right, but a single experiment might prove me wrong.
— Albert Einstein

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own set of laws.
— Douglas Adams

Occam’s Razor is the scientific principle that, all things being equal, the simplest explanation is always the dog ate my homework.
— Greg Tamblyn

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe.
— Albert Einstein

Ordinary people living above the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland have reported seeing visions of the birth of the universe. But only for a trillionth of a second.
— Greg Tamblyn

Science has now determined there is a direct relationship between the way the ball bounces and the cookie crumbles.
— Anonymous

Scientists are peeping toms at the keyhole of eternity.
— Arthur Koestler

Scientists have determined that the most irritating sound to the human ear is the sound of a knife cutting a glass bottle. And the second-worst sound is a fork scratching a glass bottle. Evidently, they did all their research at the Picnic for Morons.
— Peter Sagal

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
— Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes)

Sure, gravity makes everything sag as you get older, but it also keeps your dinner from flying all over the room so you don’t have to chase it.
— Greg Tamblyn

That's the whole problem with science. You've got a bunch of empiricists trying to describe things of unimaginable wonder.
— Anonymous

The Big Bang Explained: somebody told God a great joke when God had a mouthful of milk.
— Anonymous

The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!
— Larry Niven

The God Particle is just a regular particle that some say bears the image of the Virgin Mary. It will be on eBay shortly.
— Kelkulus

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
— B. Russell, 'The Philosophy of Logical Atomism'

The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, it is queerer than we can suppose.
— J.B.S. Haldane

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
— Douglas Adams

There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program: your tax dollar will go farther.
— Wernher von Braun

There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god.
— J. B. S. Haldane

There’s an old saying among scientific guys: You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, ideally by dropping a cement truck on them from a crane.
— Dave Barry

This just in: UFOs are here to stop Yellowstone from exploding, thus saving mankind, probably for their own amusement.
— Greg Tamblyn

We all understand the twinge of discomfort at the thought that we share a common ancestor with the apes. No one can embarrass you like a relative.
— Neal DeGrasse Tyson

We don't devote enough scientific research to finding a cure for jerks.
— Bill Watterson

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.
— Stephen Hawking

Werner Heisenberg, when asked how one could envision an atom, replied, “Don’t try”.
— Anonymous

When you are courting a nice girl, an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.
— Albert Einstein

When you get right down to it, almost every explanation Man came up with for anything until about 1926 was stupid.
— Dave Barry

Why is it that nobody understands me, and everybody likes me?
— Albert Einstein

Why would you clone people when you can go to bed with them and make a baby? C'mon, it's stupid.
— Ray Bradbury

Yet another spunky li’l NASA robot lands and begins transmitting back photographs of rocks that appear virtually identical to the rock photos beamed back by all the other spunky li’l NASA robots, thus confirming suspicions that the universe has a LOT of rocks in it.
— Dave Barry