Richard Hamming - Life Quotes

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Besides the theory there are a lot of small technical details that must be learned so well that you can recall them almost instantaneously, such as the trigonometric identities... put one part of the identity on one side of a 3 x 5 card and the other part on the other side. Using these flash cards you can, in the odd moments of your daily life, learn the mechanical parts of the course.... for this kind of low-level material many short learning sessions are much more efficient than a few long, intense ones; but this is not necessarily true for larger ideas.... most students will not use such trivial devices as flash cards; it seems to be beneath their dignity. They suffer accordingly.

Richard Hamming
If you expect to continue learning all your life, you will be teaching yourself much of the time. You must learn to learn, especially the difficult topic of mathematics.

Richard Hamming
When you take a course in Euclidean geometry is not the teacher putting a... learning program into you?... You enter the course and cannot do problems; the teacher puts into you a program and at the end of the course you can solve such problems.... Are you sure you are not merely "programmed" in life by what by chance events happens to you?

Richard Hamming
You ought to try to make significant contributions to humanity rather than just get along through life comfortably... the life of trying to achieve excellence in some area is in itself a worthy goal... A life without a struggle on your part to make yourself excellent is hardly a life worth living.... a life without such a goal... is merely existing...

Richard Hamming