Doron Zeilberger Quotes

9 Sourced Quotes

Conventional wisdom, fooled by our misleading "physical intuition", is that the real world is continuous, and that discrete models are necessary evils for approximating the "real" world, due to the innate discreteness of the digital computer.

Doron Zeilberger
The best way to learn a topic is by teaching it. Similarly the best way to understand a new proof is by writing an expository article about it.

Doron Zeilberger
Mathematics is so useful because physical scientists and engineers have the good sense to largely ignore the "religious" fanaticism of professional mathematicians, and their insistence on so-called rigor, that in many cases is misplaced and hypocritical, since it is based on "axioms" that are completely fictional, i. e. those that involve the so-called infinity.

Doron Zeilberger
Let me also remind you that zero, like all of mathematics, is fictional and an idealization. It is impossible to reach absolute zero temperature or to get perfect vacuum. Luckily, mathematics is a fairyland where ideal and fictional objects are possible.

Doron Zeilberger
Math is perfect (in principle), but mathematicians are not (because they are humans), hence the mathematics that (human) mathematicians do is influenced by the weltanschauung of the people around them.

Doron Zeilberger
Regardless of whether or not God exists, God has no place in mathematics, at least in my book.

Doron Zeilberger
When a problem seems intractable, it is often a good idea to try to study "toy" versions of it in the hope that as the toys become increasingly larger and more sophisticated, they would metamorphose, in the limit, to the real thing.

Doron Zeilberger
Algorithms existed for at least five thousand years, but people did not know that they were algorithmizing. Then came Turing (and Post and Church and Markov and others) and formalized the notion.

Doron Zeilberger
Mathematics is infinitely wide, while the language that describes it is finite. It follows from the pigeonhole principle that there exist distinct concepts that are referred to by the same name. Mathematics is also infinitely deep and sometimes entirely different concepts turn out to be intimately and profoundly related.

Doron Zeilberger