Ivars Peterson

Ivars Peterson (born 4 December 1948) is an award-winning mathematics writer.

Quotes

The Jungles of Randomness: A Mathematical Safari (1997)

All page numbers from the trade paperback first edition published by John Wiley & Sons ISBN 0-471-29587-6

• Intriguingly, the mathematics of randomness, chaos, and order also furnishes what may be a vital escape from absolute certainty—an opportunity to exercise free will in a deterministic universe. Indeed, in the interplay of order and disorder that makes life interesting, we appear perpetually poised in a state of enticingly precarious perplexity. The universe is neither so crazy that we can’t understand it at all nor so predictable that there’s nothing left for us to discover.
  • Preface, “Infinite Possibility” (p. xiii)

• The theory of probability combines commonsense reasoning with calculation. It domesticates luck, making it subservient to reason.
  • Chapter 1, “The Die is Cast” (p. 19)

• Ramsey theory implies that complete disorder is impossible. Somehow, no matter how complicated, chaotic, or random something appears, deep within that morass lurks a smaller entity that has a definite structure. Striking regularities are bound to arise even in a universe that has no rules.
  • Chapter 2, “Sea of Life” (p. 25)

• In mathematics, in science, and in life, we constantly face the delicate, tricky task of separating design from happenstance.
  • Chapter 2, “Sea of Life” (p. 43)

• Most coincidences are simply chance events that turn out to be far more probable than many people imagine.
  • Chapter 10, “Lifetimes of Chance” (p. 188)

• Tversky was fond of describing his work as “debugging human intuition.”...Tversky could establish again and again the existence of mismatches between intuition and probability—between cognitive illusion and reality.
  • Chapter 10, “Lifetimes of Chance” (pp. 192-193; ellipsis represents a minor elision of description)

• Indeed, mathematics is full of conjectures—questions waiting for answers—with no assurance that the answers even exist.
  • Chapter 10, “Lifetimes of Chance” (p. 199)

• The aim of science is to reduce the scope of chance.
  • Chapter 10, “Lifetimes of Chance” (p. 201; quoting Hegel)

• Randomness, chaos, uncertainty, and chance are all a part of our lives. They reside at the ill-defined boundaries between what we know, what we can know, and what is beyond our knowing. They make life interesting.
  • Chapter 10, “Lifetimes of Chance” (p. 202)

The Mathematical Tourist: New and Updated Snapshots of Modern Mathematics (1998)

All page numbers from the hardcover edition published by Barnes & Noble ISBN 0-7607-2361-3

Revision of The Mathematical Tourist: Snapshots of Modern Mathematics, originally published in 1988

• More often than not, a piece of mathematics worked out years before—and believed to be totally without practical value—finds a role in the “real” world.
  • Chapter 1, “Explorations” (p. 9)

• To an increasing number of practitioners, computer simulations rooted in mathematics represent a third way of doing science, alongside theory and experiment.
  • Chapter 1, “Explorations” (p. 10)

• As the mathematician Clifford Taubes noted, “Physics is the study of the world, while mathematics is the study of all possible worlds.” Thus, mathematics unveils the infinite possibilities; physics pinpoints the few that structure our universe and our existence.
  • Chapter 4, “Shadows From Higher Dimensions” (p. 114)