Agatha Christie Quotes

I've always felt some kind of connection to people who are kind of over-smart. People who over-think things to the point of some sort of paralysis, and I think that certainly can be me on any given day.

If you don't think too good, don't think too much.

What I knew was I liked math and science, and I never wanted to memorize everything. I wanted to understand where it came from.

I have always tended to over-think things and that had come into my game. That's good in certain moments but not when you have to make a quick decision.

It's got to be the best intellectual exercise out there. You're seeing through new situations every ten minutes. In the stock market you don't base your decisions on what the market is doing, but on what you think is rational. Bridge is about weighing gain/loss ratios. You're doing calculations all the time.

One of the frustrations of having a mind trained to think and consider possibilities was that it couldn't simply be stopped once engaged.

Geometry enlightens the intellect and sets one's mind right. All of its proofs are very clear and orderly. It is hardly possible for errors to enter into geometrical reasoning, because it is well arranged and orderly. Thus, the mind that constantly applies itself to geometry is not likely to fall into error. In this convenient way, the person who knows geometry acquires intelligence.

But in the new (math) approach, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer.

Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity. The activity of the intuition consists in making spontaneous judgements which are not the result of conscious trains of reasoning. The exercise of ingenuity in mathematics consists in aiding the intuition through suitable arrangements of propositions, and perhaps geometrical figures or drawings.

Geometry enlightlens the intellect and sets one's mind right

The human mind thinks but to complicate. As soon as one problem is solved, that solution introduces new complications, other problems that perhaps did not exist before. That was one of my great troubles when I was younger, I invented many things that were very fine, but always I was getting into complications. I have had to work very hard to overcome that.

I failed math twice, never fully grasping probability theory. I mean, first off, who cares if you pick a black ball or a white ball out of the bag? And second, if you’re bent over about the color, don’t leave it to chance. Look in the damn bag and pick the color you want.

Misunderstanding of probability may be the greatest of all impediments to scientific literacy.

To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational.

In mathematics, the art of asking questions is more valuable than solving problems.

Managers thinking about accounting issues should never forget one of Abraham Lincoln's favorite riddles: How many legs does a dog have, if you call a tail a leg? The answer: Four, because calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

Mathematics may be defined as the economy of counting. There is no problem in the whole of mathematics which cannot be solved by direct counting.

From somewhere, back in my youth, heard Prof say, 'Manuel, when faced with a problem you do not understand, do any part of it you do understand, then look at it again.' He had been teaching me something he himself did not understand very well—something in math—but had taught me something far more important, a basic principle.

All reasoning ends in an appeal to self-evidence.

It is a common experience that attempts to solve just one piece of a problem first, then others, and so on, lead to endless involutions. You no sooner solve one aspect of a thing, than another point is out of point. And when you correct that one, something else goes wrong. You go round and round in circles, unable to produce a form that is thoroughly right.

Our science is like a store filled with the most subtle intellectual devices for solving the most complex problems, and yet we are almost incapable of applying the elementary principles of rational thought.

And if you take one from three hundred and sixty-five what remains?" "Three hundred and sixty-four, of course." Humpty Dumpty looked doubtful, "I'd rather see that done on paper," he said.

Failing to grapple with complexity actually turns out to be a pretty bad life strategy.

I approached the bulk of my schoolwork as a chore rather than an intellectual adventure. The tedium was relieved by a few courses that seem to be qualitatively different. Geometry was the first exciting course I remember. Instead of memorizing facts, we were asked to think in clear, logical steps. Beginning from a few intuitive postulates, far reaching consequences could be derived, and I took immediately to the sport of proving theorems.

An ingenious web of probabilities is the surest screen a wise man can place between himself and the truth.