Ivars Peterson

"As the mathematician Clifford Taubes noted, “Physics is the study of the world, while mathematics is the study of all possible worlds.” Thus, mathematics unveils the infinite possibilities; physics pi…"

"Intriguingly, the mathematics of randomness, chaos, and order also furnishes what may be a vital escape from absolute certainty—an opportunity to exercise free will in a deterministic universe. Indeed…"

"Randomness, chaos, uncertainty, and chance are all a part of our lives. They reside at the ill-defined boundaries between what we know, what we can know, and what is beyond our knowing. They make life…"

"Tversky was fond of describing his work as “debugging human intuition.”...Tversky could establish again and again the existence of mismatches between intuition and probability—between cognitive illusi…"

"In mathematics, in science, and in life, we constantly face the delicate, tricky task of separating design from happenstance."

"The aim of science is to reduce the scope of chance."

"Ramsey theory implies that complete disorder is impossible. Somehow, no matter how complicated, chaotic, or random something appears, deep within that morass lurks a smaller entity that has a definite…"

"To an increasing number of practitioners, computer simulations rooted in mathematics represent a third way of doing science, alongside theory and experiment."