Logarithm Quotes (3)
...by shortening the labours doubled the life of the astronomer.
On the benefit of Napier's logarithms.
On the benefit of Napier's logarithms.
Quoted in H. Eves, In Mathematical Circles (1969).
Imagine a person with a gift of ridicule [He might say] First that a negative quantity has no logarithm; secondly that a negative quantity has no square root; thirdly that the first non-existent is to the second as the circumference of a circle is to the diameter.
See also: | Mathematics (221)
The spectacular thing about Johnny [von Neumann] was not his power as a mathematician, which was great, or his insight and his clarity, but his rapidity; he was very, very fast. And like the modern computer, which no longer bothers to retrieve the logarithm of 11 from its memory (but, instead, computes the logarithm of 11 each time it is needed), Johnny didn't bother to remember things. He computed them. You asked him a question, and if he didn't know the answer, he thought for three seconds and would produce and answer.
From interview with Donald J. Albers. In John H. Ewing and Frederick W. Gehring, Paul Halmos Celebrating 50 Years of Mathematics (1991), 9.
See also: | Answer (24) | Computer (24) | Mathematician (66) | Memory (15) | John von Neumann (5) | Question (45) | Remember (6) | Thinking (56)
