Richard Hamming - Theory Quotes

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Probability plays a central role in many fields, from quantum mechanics to information theory, and even older fields use probability now that the presence of "noise" is officially admitted. The newer aspects of many fields start with the admission of uncertainty.

Richard Hamming
In the long run, the methods are the important part of the course. It is not enough to know the theory; you should be able to apply it.

Richard Hamming
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
Continuous distributions are basic to the theory of probability and statistics, and the calculus is necessary to handle them with any ease.

Richard Hamming
When a theory is sufficiently general to cover many fields of application, it acquires some "truth" from each of them. Thus... a positive value for generalization in mathematics.

Richard Hamming
Probability is too important to be left to the experts. [...] The experts, by their very expert training and practice, often miss the obvious and distort reality seriously. [...] The desire of the experts to publish and gain credit in the eyes of their peers has distorted the development of probability theory from the needs of the average user. The comparatively late rise of the theory of probability shows how hard it is to grasp, and the many paradoxes show clearly that we, as humans, lack a well grounded intuition in the matter. Neither the intuition of the man in the street, nor the sophisticated results of the experts provides a safe basis for important actions in the world we live in.

Richard Hamming
Most people like to believe something is or is not true. Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very well. They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement theory. If you believe too much you'll never notice the flaws; if you doubt too much you won't get started. It requires a lovely balance.

Richard Hamming