Charles Seife

If you want to convince the world that a fish can sense your emotions, only one statistical measure will suffice: the p-value.

— Charles Seife

“If you want to get people to believe something really, really stupid, just stick a number on it.”

— Charles Seife

“This is the definition of the infinite: it is something that can stay the same size even when you subtract from it.”

— Charles Seife

“All polynomials of degree n-those that have a leading term of x^n- split into n distinct terms. This is the fundamental theorem…

— Charles Seife

“In string theory, zero has been banished from the universe; there is no such thing as zero distance or zero time. This…

— Charles Seife

“The justice system can't be totally free of lies and distortion; after all, courts are chock-full of lawyers.”

— Charles Seife

“In the battle between Kronecker and Cantor, Cantor would ultimately prevail. Cantor's theory would show that Kronecker's precious integers-and even the rational…

— Charles Seife

“Just as it's important to take the changing value of a dollar into account when comparing spending over time, it's important to…

— Charles Seife

“Christianity initially rejected zero, but trade would soon demand it. The man who reintroduced zero to the West was Leonardo of Pisa.…

— Charles Seife

“Bad information is a disease that attacks the brain. It messes with your head, making you do things that you shouldn't, causing…

— Charles Seife

“Quantum mechanics has a similar problem, a problem related to the zero-point energy. The laws of quantum mechanics treat particles such as…

— Charles Seife

“The infinite zero of a black hole-mass crammed into zero space, curving space infinitely-punches a hole in the smooth rubber sheet. The…

— Charles Seife

Contrary to what our brains are telling us, there's no mystical force that imbues a winner with a streak of luck, nor…

— Charles Seife

“In Cantor's mind there were an infinite number of infinities-the transfinite numbers-each nested in the other. Aleph 0 is smaller than Aleph…

— Charles Seife

“The Mayan system made more sense than the Western system does. Since the Western calendar was created at a time when there…

— Charles Seife

“Leibniz's calculus had the same power as Newton's, and thanks to its notation, even a bit more. Nevertheless, underneath all the mathematics,…

— Charles Seife

“The electron that scientists see in the laboratory-the electron that physicists, chemists, and engineers have known and loved for decades-is an impostor.…

— Charles Seife

“Skinnerian conditioning, crossed with social pressure, is now an ever-present invisible hand that tries to manipulate all of your actions on the…

— Charles Seife

“Digital information has an unbelievably high R0 [basic reproductive rate], and this means that it's hard to stop once it emerges. It…

— Charles Seife

“A bad idea, a wrong piece of information, a digital brain-altering virus can spread at the speed of light through the internet…

— Charles Seife

“Though the Casimir force-a mysterious, phantom force exerted by nothing at all-seems like science fiction, it exists. It is a tiny force…

— Charles Seife

“Banishing zero also solves the infinity problems in general relativity. If you imagine a black hole as a string, no longer do…

— Charles Seife

“There are many ways to generate numerical falsehoods from data, many ways to create proofiness from even valid meaurements. Causuistry distorts the…

— Charles Seife

“Zero and infinity are eternally locked in a struggle to engulf all the numbers. Like a Manichaean nightmare, the two sit on…

— Charles Seife

“In 1933, the Indian Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar realized that the Pauli exclusion principle had only a limited ability to fight against the squeeze…

— Charles Seife

“The key to a black hole's strange properties is the way it curves space-time. A black hole takes up no space at…

— Charles Seife

“Further calculations showed that when collapsing stars are a little more massive than the Chandrasekhar limit, the pressure of the resulting neutrons-similar…

— Charles Seife

“How could the vacuum, which has nothing in it, have any energy at all? The answer comes from another equation: Einstein's famous…

— Charles Seife

“With news and data that is tailored to our prejudices, we deprive ourselves of true information. We wind up wallowing in our…

— Charles Seife

“Zero dwells at the juxtaposition of quantum mechanics and relativity; zero lives where the two theories meet, and zero causes the two…

— Charles Seife

Zero is powerful because it is infinity’s twin. They are equal and opposite, yin and yang. They are equally paradoxical and troubling.…

— Charles Seife

“The Greeks couldn't do this neat little mathematical trick. They didn't have the concept of a limit because they didn't believe in…

— Charles Seife

“Removing zero from the universe might seem like a drastic step, but strings are much more tractable than dots; by eliminating zero,…

— Charles Seife

“Not only does the media fail to challenge our preconceptions - instead reinforcing them as media outlets try to cater to smaller…

— Charles Seife

“As mathematicians were uncovering the connection between zero and infinity, physicists began to encounter zeros in the natural world; zero crossed over…

— Charles Seife

“We tend to shy away from data that challenges our assumptions, that erodes our preconceptions. Getting rid of our wrong ideas is…

— Charles Seife