The Advantage is that mathematics is a field in which one's blunders tend to show very clearly and can be corrected or erased with a stroke of the pencil. It is a field which has often been compared with chess, but differs from the latter in that it is only one's best moments that count and not one's worst. A single inattention may lose a chess game, whereas a single successful approach to a problem, among many which have been relegated to the wastebasket, will make a mathematician's reputation.
Interpretation
Mathematics allows for clear identification and correction of mistakes, unlike chess where a single error can lead to defeat.
In this quote, Norbert Wiener highlights the unique nature of mathematics as a discipline where errors can be easily corrected, signifying an important aspect of learning and improvement. Unlike chess, where one misstep can determine the outcome of a game, mathematics encourages a focus on successful solutions over failures, emphasizing the value of persistence and the clarity with which mistakes can be rectified in problem-solving.
In practice
During a mathematics class, the teacher emphasizes the importance of learning from mistakes.
In a very real sense, we are shipwrecked passengers on a doomed planet. Yet, even in a shipwreck, human decencies and human values do not necessarily vanish, and we must make the most of them. We shall go down, but let it be in a manner to which we may look forward as worthy of our dignity.
I have said that the modern man, and especially the modern American, however much 'know-how' he may have, has very little 'know-what'
Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor.
We have modified our environment so radically that we must now modify ourselves to exist in this new environment.
We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves. _x000D_ A pattern is a message, and may be transmitted as a message.
Let us remember that the automatic machine is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic consequences of slave labor.
I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform.
All of these young people have some kind of potential in them. And if we don't invest in them as a nation, regardless of where they come from or what color they are, if we don't invest in them, we lose.
Our babies know nothing about hate or racism. But soon they begin to learn - and only from us.
No bubble is so iridescent or floats longer than that blown by the successful teacher.
Let no man despise the oracles of books! A book is a dead man, a sort of mummy, embowelled and embalmed, but that once had flesh and motion and a boundless variety of determinations and actions.
How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.
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