Conrad Wolfram Quotes

We have a culture where it’s OK to not know anything about mathematics whereas in Asia, they don’t

You know, I'm not terribly fast at my times tables, because that's not what I think mathematics is about.

Being bad at maths shouldn't be something to brag about, and I'm glad people are waking up to this, but there's no reason be embarrassed to look for help when it comes to numeracy.

I tell students that even if they don't like math right now, they can use math as a brain-sharpening tool - a tool that not only builds the foundation for a great career, but that also builds self-confidence, no matter what they choose to do with their lives.

When I went into the seminary, I was one of those victims of New Math and had not had Algebra I and had no idea what we were doing in New Math in the ninth grade. But when I went into the seminary, they had gone the traditional route and taught first-year algebra.

Go to a job interview and tell and employer that you can recite the 17 times table; they don't care. Why are we still teaching it?

Stand firm in your refusal to remain conscious during algebra. In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.

No one wants to read a math book.

My main concern with the condition of mathematics in high school is that there's a lot of fear involved! Math is not, generally speaking, presented in a fun way. The concepts, as I see them, are fun, and that's the way I'd like to convey them myself.

I still have to count on my hands! I'll be in a restaurant doing a tip and I'll be like, 'What's 20% of this?'

Maths is fundamentally a different process in education than it is in the real world. There is an insistence that we do maths by hand when most of it is done by computers. The idea that you have to do everything by hand before you can operate a computer is nonsense.

I'm probably one of the worst people with numbers you've ever met. My brothers always kid that they think I'm counting cards in Vegas, but I'm just trying to add things up.

Fifty percent of our high schools do not even offer calculus—no one in those schools can take calculus.

I studied math, and I was terrible at it.

People in the media and press often say they've never been good at math. It might be that people that consider themselves creative didn't consider themselves good at math or didn't find math interesting at those early stages. And those creative people are disproportionately represented in those influential roles.

I'm the 'Dear Abby' of math problems. But if you understand something, shouldn't you be able to explain it? Isn't that the whole point?

Maths is like learning a language: you need to learn the basics to get going, but a lot of adults go into blind panic about numbers and switch off.

Schools can ebb and flow. It can be phenomenal one day, and then you hit fractions, and it falls apart.

I want to make everyone believe that they can understand math and science.

Speaking of human computers, there is a guy named Art Benjamin, he's a human calculator. He says it's a skill he learned as a kid. Now he's a math professor at Harvey Mudd. He can find the square root of a six digit number in a few seconds. Practice.

The computers are not replacing mathematicians; they are breeding them.

My brain doesn't work very well, in terms of mathematics. I'm not one of those people who can just spout off numbers for things, if numbers are thrown at me.

I worry about Las Vegas schools. I hear in math, they only teach them to count to 21.

President Obama said he plans on training 10,000 new math and science teachers. How about teaching math to that economic team of his?

I think there's no way they should have to teach [math] now. We have computers. We no longer need to know why 3x = 2y/4.