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Saturday, September 11, 2010

Math Quote Of The Day.



Having discussed the axiom of choice earlier today I wanted to post a quote by the mathematician Jerry Bona.
"The Axiom of Choice is obviously true, the well-ordering principle obviously false, and who can tell about Zorn's lemma?"
I guarantee you mathematicians will find this hilarious but for those of you left in the dark, the Wikipedia goes on to say:  "This is a joke: although the three are all mathematically equivalent, many mathematicians find the axiom of choice to be intuitive, the well-ordering principle to be counterintuitive, and Zorn's lemma to be too complex for any intuition."

3 comments:

  1. Is this why mathematicians dress so funny?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Stan, yes, and given Russell's quote it is easy to understand why of all things they often pick bad combinations of socks. :)

    ReplyDelete

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