Paul Lockhart Quotes

24 quotes in 500 categories

• Mathematics is the music of reason.
• To do mathematics is to engage in an act of discovery and conjecture, intuition and inspiration; to be in a state of confusion − not…
• Doing mathematics should always mean finding patterns and crafting beautiful and meaningful explanations.
• It is the story that matters not just the ending.
• Mental acuity of any kind comes from solving problems yourself, not from being told how to solve them.
• A good problem is something you don't know how to solve. That's what makes it a good puzzle and a good opportunity.
• Why don't we want our children to learn to do mathematics? Is it that we don't trust them, that we think it's too hard? We…
• If teaching is reduced to mere data transmission, if there is no sharing or excitement and wonder, if teachers themselves are passive recipients of information…
• Mathematics is the art of explanation. If you deny students the opportunity to engage in this activity-- to pose their own problems, to make their…
• I don't see how it's doing society any good to have so many members walking around with vague memories of algebraic formulas and geometric diagrams…
• Mathematics is not a language, it's an adventure
• There is nothing as dreamy and poetic, nothing as radical, subversive, and psychedelic, as mathematics. It is every bit as mind blowing as cosmology or…
• The mathematical question is "Why?" It's always why. And the only way we know how to answer such questions is to come up, from scratch,…
• No mathematician in the world would bother making these senseless distinctions: 2 1/2 is a "mixed number " while 5/2 is an "improper fraction." They're…
• In any case, do you really think kids even want something that is relevant to their daily lives? You think something practical like compound interest…
• So how does one go about proving something like this? It's not like being a lawyer, where the goal is to persuade other people; nor…
• [Math] curriculum is obsessed with jargon and nomenclature seemingly for no other purpose than to provide teachers with something to test the students on.
• The thing I want you especially to understand is this feeling of divine revelation. I feel that this structure was "out there" all along I…
• The only thing I am interested in using mathematics for is to have a good time and to help others do the same.
• Mathematics is about problems, and problems must be made the focus of a student's mathematical life. Painful and creatively frustrating as it may be, students…

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