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Paul Halmos Quotes about Math

All Paul Halmos Quotes Education Knowledge Math quotes Mathematics Science Students
The only way to learn mathematics is to do mathematics.

The only way to learn mathematics is to do mathematics.

Paul Halmos
Learning, Math, Way

A good stack of examples, as large as possible, is indispensable for a thorough understanding of any concept,and when I want to learn something new, I make it my first job to build one.

Paul Halmos
Education, Jobs, Math

The only way to learn mathematics is to do mathematics. That tenet is the foundation of the do-it-yourself, Socratic, or Texas method.

Paul Halmos
Education, Knowledge, Math
P.R. Halmos, Paul Richard Halmos (1982). “A Hilbert Space Problem Book”, p.7, Springer Science & Business Media

Mathematics is not a deductive science - that's a cliché. When you try to prove a theorem, you don't just list the hypotheses, and then start to reason. What you do is trial and error, experimentation, guesswork.

Paul Halmos
Math, Science, Errors
"I Want to be a Mathematician: An Automathography". Book by Paul Halmos, 1985.

To be a scholar of mathematics you must be born with talent, insight, concentration, taste, luck, drive and the ability to visualize and guess.

Paul Halmos
Math, Luck, Taste

When a student comes and asks, "Should I become a mathematician?" the answer should be no. If you have to ask, you shouldn't even ask.

Paul Halmos
Math, Answers, Students

I remember one occasion when I tried to add a little seasoning to a review, but I wasn't allowed to. The paper was by Dorothy Maharam, and it was a perfectly sound contribution to abstract measure theory. The domains of the underlying measures were not sets but elements of more general Boolean algebras, and their range consisted not of positive numbers but of certain abstract equivalence classes. My proposed first sentence was: "The author discusses valueless measures in pointless spaces."

Paul Halmos
Math, Class, Numbers

The joy of suddenly learning a former secret and the joy of suddenly discovering a hitherto unknown truth are the same to me - both have the flash of enlightenment, the almost incredibly enhanced vision, and the ecstasy and euphoria of released tension.

Paul Halmos
Truth, Learning, Math

Mathematics - this may surprise or shock some - is never deductive in creation.

Paul Halmos
Education, Knowledge, Math

Mathematics is not a deductive science - that's a cliché... What you do is trial and error, experimentation, guesswork.

Paul Halmos
Math, Errors, Trial And Error
"I Want to be a Mathematician: An Automathography". Book by Paul Halmos, 1985.

Many teachers are concerned about the amount of material they must cover in a course. One cynic suggested a formula: since, he said, students on the average remember only about 40% of what you tell them, the thing to do is to cram into each course 250% of what you hope will stick.

Paul Halmos
Education, Teacher, Math

... the student skit at Christmas contained a plaintive line: "Give us Master's exams that our faculty can pass, or give us a faculty that can pass our Master's exams."

Paul Halmos
Math, Giving, Lines

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