Richard Hamming Quotes

In forming your plan for your future you need to distinguish three different questions: What is possible? What is likely to happen? What is desirable to have happen? In a sense the first is Science... The second is Engineering.. The third is ethics, morals, or... value judgements. ...you will probably have an idea of how to alter things to make the more desirable future occur ...having a vision is what tends to separate the leaders from the followers.

The Postulates of Mathematics Were Not on the Stone Tablets that Moses Brought Down from Mt. Sinai.

an examination of history and of reports of those who have done great work, all seem to show that typically the pattern of creativity is as follows. There is first the recognition of the problem in some dim sense. This is followed by a longer or shorter period of refinement of the problem. Do not be too hasty at this stage, as you are likely to put the problem in the conventional form and find only the conventional solution. This stage, moreover, requires your emotional involvement, your commitment to finding a solution, since without a deep emotional involvement you are not likely to find a really fundamental, novel solution.

Often it is not physical limitations... but rather it is human made laws, habits, and organizational rules, regulations, personal egos, and inertia, which dominate the evolution of the future.

The assumptions and definitions of mathematics and science come from our intuition, which is based ultimately on experience. They then get shaped by further experience in using them and are occasionally revised. They are not fixed for all eternity.

It is obvious: The past was once the future and the future will become the past.

In science if you know what you are doing you should not be doing it. In engineering if you do not know what you are doing you should not be doing it. Of course, you seldom, if ever, see either pure state.

We constantly use the word "simplify", but its meaning depends on what you are going to do next, and there is no uniform definition.

The fundamentals of language are not understood to this day. ...Until we understand languages of communication involving humans as they are then it is unlikely many of our software problems will vanish.

Perhaps thinking should be measured not by what you do but by how you do it.

I have often wondered what would have happened if I had had a modern, high-speed computer. Would I ever have acquired the feeling for the missile, upon which so much depended in the final design?

I must address the topic of whether the effort required for excellence worth it. I believe it is — the chief gain is in the effort to change yourself, in the struggle with yourself, and it is less in the winning than you might expect. Yes, it is nice to end up where you wanted to be, but the person you are when you get there is far more important. I believe a life in which you do not try to extend yourself regularly is not worth living — but it is up to you to pick the goals you believe are worth striving for.

The methods of mathematics are the main topic of the course, not a long list of finished mathematical results with such highly polished proofs that the poor student can only marvel at the results, with no hope of understanding how mathematics is actually created by practicing mathematicians.

Great results in science and engineering are "bunched" in the same person too often for success to be a matter of random luck.

Almost all professionals are slow to use their own expertise for their own work.