A COLLECTION OF GOOD WORDS
数学
Math
Never had any mathematical conversations with anybody, because there was nobody else in my field.
从来没有和任何人谈过数学，因为在我的领域里没有其他人。
Mathematics was hard, dull work. Geography pleased me more. For dancing I was quite enthusiastic.
数学是艰苦、枯燥的工作。地理更使我高兴。我对跳舞很有热情。
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.
人类最大的缺点是我们无法理解指数函数。
Can you imagine young people nowadays making a study of trigonometry for the fun of it? Well I did.
你能想象现在的年轻人为了好玩而学习三角函数吗?我所做的。
My first degree came years before my second. I had wanted to be a physicist, but I flunked calculus.
我的第一个学位比第二个学位早了好几年。我本想成为一名物理学家，但我的微积分不及格。
The abstract analysis of the world by mathematics and physics rests on the concepts of space and time.
数学和物理对世界的抽象分析建立在空间和时间的概念上。
Newton, of course, was the inventor of differential calculus so his place in the tale is quite special.
当然，牛顿是微分学的发明者，所以他在这个故事中的地位相当特殊。
A pure mathematical series would be one in which each term is derived from the preceding term by a rule.
一个纯数学级数应该是一个每一项都由前一项根据规则推导出来的级数。
I was always good at math and science, and I never realized that that was unusual or somehow undesirable.
我一直擅长数学和科学，我从来没有意识到这是不寻常的或不受欢迎的。
The rotation of the polarization plane is extraordinarily small in all gases, thus also in sodium vapour.
极化平面的旋转在所有气体中都非常小，因此在钠蒸气中也是如此。
Math proficiency is the gateway to a number of incredible careers that students may never have considered.
数学水平是通往许多学生可能从未考虑过的令人难以置信的职业的大门。
Our research led on to other things, such as the fact that exchange rates are not lognormally distributed.
我们的研究还引出了其他一些问题，比如汇率并非对数正态分布。
KEEP EXPLORING
沿着这个主题，再读几句。
As a kid I quite fancied the romantic, Bohemian idea of being an artist. I expect I thought I could escape from the difficulties of maths and spelling. Maybe I thought I would avoid the judgement of the establishment.
当我还是个孩子的时候，我很喜欢做一个浪漫的，波希米亚式的艺术家。我想我可以摆脱数学和拼写的困难。也许我想我应该避免对体制的评判。
Pure mathematicians just love to try unsolved problems - they love a challenge.
纯粹的数学家只是喜欢尝试未解决的问题——他们喜欢挑战。
If mathematics is to be understood widely, we need to emphasise its elegance and its applications. Sometimes it seems that universities want to emphasise how difficult it is!
要使数学得到广泛的理解，我们需要强调它的优雅及其应用。有时候，大学似乎想强调这是多么困难!
Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.
数学是一种给不同事物取相同名字的艺术。
One can imagine that the ultimate mathematician is one who can see analogies between analogies.
可以想象，最终的数学家是一个能在类比之间看到类比的人。
Most of the time I liked school and got good grades. In junior high, though, I hit a stumbling block with math - I used to come home and cry because of how frustrated I was! But after a few good teachers and a lot of perseverance, I ended up loving math and even choosing it as a major when I got to college.
大部分时间我喜欢学校，取得了好成绩。然而在初中的时候，我在数学上遇到了一个绊脚石——我常常回到家哭，因为我是多么的沮丧!但是经过几位好老师的努力和不懈的努力，我最终爱上了数学，甚至在我上大学时选择了数学作为我的专业。