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View Plans"Now and then, teaching may approach poetry, and now and then it may approach profanity. May I tell you a little story about the great Einstein? I listened once to Einstein as he talked to a group of physicists in a party. "Why have all the electrons the same charge?" said he. "Well, why are all the little balls in the goat dung of the same size?" Why did Einstein say such things? Just to make some snobs to raise their eyebrows? He was not disinclined to do so, I think. Yet, probably, it went deeper. I do not think that the overheard remark of Einstein was quite casual. At any rate, I learnt something from it: Abstractions are important; use all means to make them more tangible. Nothing is too good or too bad, too poetical or too trivial to clarify your abstractions. As Montaigne put it: The truth is such a great thing that we should not disdain any means that could lead to it. Therefore, if the spirit moves you to be a little poetical, or a little profane, in your class, do not have the wrong kind of inhibition." - George Polya's Mathematical Discovery, Volume 11, pp 102, 1962.
About George Pólya
George Pólya (December 13, 1887 – September 7, 1985) was a Hungarian mathematician and professor of mathematics at ETH Zürich and at Stanford University. His work on heuristics and pedagogy has had substantial and lasting influence on mathematical education, and has also been influential in artificial intelligence.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Additional quotes by George Pólya
A good notation should be unambiguous, pregnant, easy to remember.
Mathematics, you see, is not a spectator sport. To understand mathematics means to be able to do mathematics. And what does it mean [to be] doing mathematics? In the first place, it means to be able to solve mathematical problems.
Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules. 1. To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry. Some pedants are poor fools; they never did understand the rule which they apply so conscientiously and so indiscriminately. Some pedants are quite successful; they understood their rule, at least in the beginning (before they became pedants), and chose a good one that fits in many cases and fails only occasionally. To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery.