What interests me is the connection between maths and the real world. Terence Tao More Quotes by Terence Tao More Quotes From Terence Tao Most of what I do does not save lives. Terence Tao lives save does most I was never very good at school with... humanities... anything which was more a matter of opinion. Terence Tao good opinion matter school I remember having this vague idea that what mathematicians did was that some authority, someone, gave them problems to solve, and they just sort of solved them. Terence Tao problems some someone remember I always liked numbers. Terence Tao liked always numbers I always liked situations where there were very clear rules of what to do. Terence Tao rules where always clear You want to get to the top of the cliff. But that's not what you focus on immediately. You focus on the next ledge just beyond your reach, because you need to do one clever thing to get up there. And then, once you get there, you do it again. A lot of this is rather boring and not very glamorous. But you can't jump cliffs in a single bound. Terence Tao jump you boring focus It was traditional to not actually cash the prizes that Erdos did award while he was alive. People usually framed the cheque instead. Terence Tao award he alive people When I was seven or eight, whenever I was getting too rowdy at night, my parents would give me a maths workbook to work on to quieten me down. Terence Tao parents me work night I often don't know what I'll be working on next year or a year from now. There is often a chance meeting, or something that I worked on 10 years ago suddenly becomes important again. Terence Tao meeting know chance important I think one nice thing about mathematics is that we don't really have one prize that dominates all the others, like the Nobel prizes. Terence Tao like think mathematics nice The accuracy of Wikipedia can be dodgy in some places, but in maths, it's really quite good. Terence Tao places some good accuracy I still remember the realization in college at Flinders University in Australia that mathematics was not just an abstract game of symbols but could be used as a tool to analyze and understand the modern world. Terence Tao game mathematics remember world
