I still remember the realization in college at Flinders University in Australia that mathematics was not just an abstract game of symbols but could be used as a tool to analyze and understand the modern world.
Terence TaoRead
When you're concentrating hard, hours can fly by, and it's just you and a math problem.
Interpretation
Focus can make time feel fleeting while engaging with challenging tasks.
This quote highlights the unique experience of deep concentration, especially in the context of solving complex problems. It suggests that when one is fully immersed in an intellectually demanding activity, such as mathematics, the passage of time becomes irrelevant, replaced by a sense of connection between the individual and the challenge at hand.
In practice
During a seminar on the importance of focus in problem-solving.
I still remember the realization in college at Flinders University in Australia that mathematics was not just an abstract game of symbols but could be used as a tool to analyze and understand the modern world.
Most students who take math classes aren't going to be mathematicians. They're going to be engineers, statisticians - in many ways, that's the more important mission of math education.
For me, I guess the main motivation is the satisfaction of finally understanding some tricky mathematical concept or phenomenon and then explaining it to others.
One can think of any given axiom system as being like a computer with a certain limited amount of memory or processing power. One could switch to a computer with even more storage, but no matter how large an amount of storage space the computer has, there will still exist some tasks that are beyond its ability.
I recall being fascinated by numbers even at age three and viewed their manipulation as a kind of game.
Talent is important, but how one develops and nurtures it is even more so.
The tears that you spill, the sorrowful, are sweeter than the laughter of snobs and the guffaws of scoffers.
Take advice, but don't take orders.
Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness. I can tell you, as I'm sitting here dying, when you most need it, neither money nor power will give you the feeling you're looking for, no matter how much of them you have."
When you are completely free from boundaries, you don't have to have a huge number of material things. You already own something far more precious. You own yourself.
But somewhere within each of us, buried at varying depths depending on the age and degree of neglect or abuse, shame or coercion we endured, there is a resistant, daydreaming, rebellious, creative, unique child -- a true self who is waiting.
Of course there is enough to stir our wonder anywhere; there's enough to love, anywhere, if one is strong enough, if one is diligent enough, if one is perceptive, patient, kind enough -- whatever it takes.
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