George Polya Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“Mathematics is the cheapest science. Unlike physics or chemistry, it does not require any expensive equipment. All one needs for mathematics is a pencil and paper.”
-- George Polya -
“A great discovery solves a great problem, but there is a grain of discovery in the solution of any problem. Your problem may be modest, but if it challenges your curiosity and brings into play your inventive faculties, and if you solve it by your own means, you may experience the tension and enjoy the triumph of discovery.”
-- George Polya -
“Where should I start? Start from the statement of the problem. ... What can I do? Visualize the problem as a whole as clearly and as vividly as you can. ... What can I gain by doing so? You should understand the problem, familiarize yourself with it, impress its purpose on your mind.”
-- George Polya -
“Even fairly good students, when they have obtained the solution of the problem and written down neatly the argument, shut their books and look for something else. Doing so, they miss an important and instructive phase of the work. ... A good teacher should understand and impress on his students the view that no problem whatever is completely exhausted.”
-- George Polya -
“Beauty in mathematics is seeing the truth without effort.”
-- George Polya -
“Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules. To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry. [...] To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery.”
-- George Polya -
“If you wish to learn swimming you have to go into the water and if you wish to become a problem solver you have to solve problems.”
-- George Polya -
“Epitaph on Newton: Nature and Nature's law lay hid in night: God said, "Let Newton be!," and all was light. [added by Sir John Collings Squire: It did not last: the Devil shouting "Ho. Let Einstein be," restored the status quo] [Aaron Hill's version: O'er Nature's laws God cast the veil of night, Out blaz'd a Newton's soul and all was light.”
-- George Polya -
“My method to overcome a difficulty is to go round it.”
-- George Polya -
“In order to translate a sentence from English into French two things are necessary. First, we must understand thoroughly the English sentence. Second, we must be familiar with the forms of expression peculiar to the French language. The situation is very similar when we attempt to express in mathematical symbols a condition proposed in words. First, we must understand thoroughly the condition. Second, we must be familiar with the forms of mathematical expression.”
-- George Polya -
“Solving problems is a practical skill like, let us say, swimming. We acquire any practical skill by imitation and practice. Trying to swim, you imitate what other people do with their hands and feet to keep their heads above water, and, finally, you learn to swim by practicing swimming. Trying to solve problems, you have to observe and to imitate what other people do when solving problems, and, finally, you learn to do problems by doing them.”
-- George Polya -
“If there is a problem you can't solve, then there is an easier problem you can't solve: find it.”
-- George Polya -
“The first rule of style is to have something to say. The second rule of style is to control yourself when, by chance, you have two things to say; say first one, then the other, not both at the same time.”
-- George Polya -
“I am too good for philosophy and not good enough for physics. Mathematics is in between.”
-- George Polya -
“Mathematics consists in proving the most obvious thing in the least obvious way.”
-- George Polya -
“Success in solving the problem depends on choosing the right aspect, on attacking the fortress from its accessible side.”
-- George Polya -
“It is better to solve one problem five different ways, than to solve five problems one way.”
-- George Polya -
“Mathematics has two faces: it is the rigorous science of Euclid, but it is also something else. Mathematics presented in the Euclidean way appears as a systematic, deductive science; but mathematics in the making appears as an experimental, inductive science. Both aspects are as old as the science of mathematics itself.”
-- George Polya -
“Euclid 's manner of exposition, progressing relentlessly from the data to the unknown and from the hypothesis to the conclusion, is perfect for checking the argument in detail but far from being perfect for making understandable the main line of the argument.”
-- George Polya -
“Analogy pervades all our thinking, our everyday speech and our trivial conclusions as well as artistic ways of expression and the highest scientific achievements.”
-- George Polya -
“In order to solve this differential equation you look at it until a solution occurs to you.”
-- George Polya -
“In the "commentatio" (note presented to the Russian Academy) in which his theorem on polyhedra (on the number of faces, edges and vertices) was first published Euler gives no proof. In place of a proof, he offers an inductive argument: he verifies the relation in a variety of special cases. There is little doubt that he also discovered the theorem, as many of his other results, inductively.”
-- George Polya -
“I am intentionally avoiding the standard term which, by the way, did not exist in Euler's time. One of the ugliest outgrowths of the "new math" was the premature introduction of technical terms.”
-- George Polya -
“A mathematician who can only generalise is like a monkey who can only climb up a tree, and a mathematician who can only specialise is like a monkey who can only climb down a tree. In fact neither the up monkey nor the down monkey is a viable creature. A real monkey must find food and escape his enemies and so must be able to incessantly climb up and down. A real mathematician must be able to generalise and specialise.”
-- George Polya -
“Hilbert once had a student in mathematics who stopped coming to his lectures, and he was finally told the young man had gone off to become a poet. Hilbert is reported to have remarked: 'I never thought he had enough imagination to be a mathematician.'”
-- George Polya -
“The principle is so perfectly general that no particular application of it is possible.”
-- George Polya -
“The first and foremost duty of the high school in teaching mathematics is to emphasize methodical work in problem solving...The teacher who wishes to serve equally all his students, future users and nonusers of mathematics, should teach problem solving so that it is about one-third mathematics and two-thirds common sense.”
-- George Polya -
“To write and speak correctly is certainly necessary; but it is not sufficient. A derivation correctly presented in the book or on the blackboard may be inaccessible and uninstructive, if the purpose of the successive steps is incomprehensible, if the reader or listener cannot understand how it was humanly possible to find such an argument....”
-- George Polya -
“An idea which can be used once is a trick. If it can be used more than once it becomes a method.”
-- George Polya
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