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‘They’re pretty high mountains,’ said Azhural, his voice now edged with doubt.
‘Slopes go up, slopes go down,’ said M’bu gnomically. ‘That’s true,’ said Azhural. ‘Like, on average, it’s flat all the way.’ (MP)
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It was amazing, he thought, how people would argue against figures on no better basis than 'they must be wrong'.
'I'm sure the Bursar would not agree with those figures,' said the Senior Wrangler sourly. 'That is so,' said Ponder, 'but I'm afraid that is because he regards the decimal point as a nuisance'. (UA) 'Men’s minds work different from ours, see. Their magic’s all numbers and angles and edges and what the stars are doing, as if that really mattered. It’s all power. It’s all-’ Granny paused, and dredged up her favourite word to describe all she despised in wizardry, ‘-jommetry.' (ER)
You could show Bigmac some sort of horrible equation and he’d say ‘x=2.75’ and he’d be right. But he never knew why. ‘It’s just what it is,’ he’d say. And that was no good. Knowing the answers wasn’t what Maths was about. Maths was about showing how you worked them out, even if you got them wrong. (JB)
It was Maths again. As far as Johnny was concerned, the future would be a better place if it didn’t contain 3y + x2. He had problems enough without people giving him pages of them. (OYCSM)
They stared at the branch. There wasn't just one flower out there, there were dozens, although the frogs weren't able to think like this because frogs can't count beyond one.
They saw lots of ones. (Wings) 'Numbers are easy to outwit. They can’t think back. The people who devise the crosswords, now they are indeed devious.' (MM)
'... words are soft and can be pummeled into different meanings by a skilled tongue. Numbers are hard. Oh, you
can cheat with them but you cannot change their nature.' (MM) 'She used to say that a girl who knew how to use a set square and protractor would go a long way in life.' (Th)
'Well, there’s…’ Colon racked his brains. ‘There’s al-gebra. That’s like sums with letters. For…for people whose brains aren’t clever enough for numbers, see?' (J)
'You never have been very good at numbers, have you?’ said Granny. Now she drew a circle around the final
figure. ‘Oh, you know me, Esme’ said Nanny cheerfully. ‘I couldn’t subtract a fart from a plate of beans.' (Ma) Lack of fingers was another big spur to the development of camel intellect. Human mathematical development had always been held back by everyone’s instinctive tendency, when faced with something really complex in the way of triform polynomials or parametric differentials, to count fingers. Camels started from the word go by counting numbers. (P)
It's not for nothing that advanced mathematics tends to be invented in hot countries. It’s because of the morphic resonance of all the camels, who have that disdainful expression and famous curled lip as a natural result of an ability to do quadratic equations. (P)
'…the way I see it, logic is only a way of being ignorant by numbers.' (SG)
It always amazed Vimes how Nobby got along with practically everyone. It must, he’d decided, have something to do with the common denominator. In the entire world of mathematics there could be no denominator as common as
Nobby. (GG) 'Algebra?’ said Madam Frout, perforce staring at her own bosom, which no one else had ever done. ‘But that’s far too difficult for seven-year-olds!’
‘Yes, but I didn’t tell them that and so far they haven’t found out,’ said Susan. (TOT) |
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