Mathematics and Statistics

On mathematics
• "Mathematics is a long sequence of simple things that together become highly non-trivial."
• "A mathematician just writes formulae; he doesn't understand anything."
• "This doesn't really correspond with reality, but this is the Maths department - Physics is downstairs: help yourself."
• "A very useful thing in mathematics is forgetting things."
• "The further you go in maths, the more willing you become to say stupid things. Don't quote me on that."
• "The most difficult thing in a lecture is not what to say but what not to say."
• "Definition of a mathematician: says one thing, writes another, and means a third."
• "This appears to be a very difficult problem so no-one wants to do it."
• "Sets are not doors."
• "Easy things are difficult to know."
• "The original problem may not be as important as the result."

On being an inspiration
• "And now we've parameterised the universe."
• "I like to see a man enjoying himself."
• "You could not write these down, but your soul will be in eternal torment if you don't."
• "So Hubble calculated that the universe was 2 billion years old . . . which really p****d off the geologists."
• "Having told you it's a problem, I'm now going to tell you it's not a problem."
• "If this isn't familiar, you should prove it to yourself six times before going to bed tonight."
• "I'm not supposed to use the words 'Hilbert Space' . . . but this is a Hilbert space."
• "It's important to use abbreviations otherwise people might understand what you were saying."
• "You all look very tired and sleepy today - shall I dance and sing?"
• "These types of proof are unpleasant: you wouldn't like it, I wouldn't like it and it would say nothing."

On not being an inspiration
• "This is not important because no-one in any right state of mind would do this."
• "I myself think that this argument is complete junk . . . but I can repeat it."
• "I can do this in two ways. However, I left half of my notes at home so I'll just do it in one."
• "So last week's lecture was pretty much boll***s."
• "I'm not going to tell you how to do it right because it's too difficult."
• "To get a radical extension you put in all these radical things. That was a profound statement, wasn't it? I think I'll just let that one go and hope that you forget I even started."
• "Science is a series of lies that get closer and closer to the truth."
• "Why? Because . . . boll***s."
• "Let me rephrase all of that so it makes sense."
• "So the theorem says 'Yaddah yaddah yaddah' and the proof says something disgusting."
• "The assertion is true by me pointing."
• "It's about time I actually said something."
• "There's no way I can assure this is a natural definition. I can just tell you it is and say that it's obviously not incorrect."
• "None of these things matters."
• "I've always said that one of the things about teaching is that it's not only important to know what you're going to say but also what you're not going to say. I'm not going to say anything about this."
• "I'm fed up, I can't be bothered to do this - you finish it."
• "If you get stuck with my lectures you can read these books and see how hard it can really get."
• "If you know what this is then just forget it because you'll know what it is again in a minute."
• "That looks like it's going to be a horrible equation . . . and in fact it is."
• "Look at that book. You'll get an incorrect proof of this theorem so don't look at that book."
• "This is the tricky bit . . . but . . . I'm just doing a sketch proof so I'll ignore it."
• "Even I can do that in my head . . . if I'm lucky."
• "In four dimensions you don't draw the pictures anymore. I'll just write 'etc.' which means I don't know what they look like."
• "I'm just guessing now."
• "I know about as much about this as you do."
• "Cunningly, I've given you the wrong argument. Isn't that funny?"
• "Where's Africa?"
• "That proof is easy - if you sit in front of a piece of paper for half a day you should figure it out. This one is different."
• "I don't know the meaning of these words."
• "Oh, I'm always missing out 3."
• "Here is a theorem I was too stupid to say last time."
• "The proof is unbelievably easy . . . somehow."
• "This proof is stupid."
• "The formula is very simple just completely impossible to understand."
• "I'm sorry about Monday - I just got so terribly bored with what we were doing."
• "Oh yes: I'm stupid."
• "Since it's completely trivial, I'll prove it."
• "Now I'll show you that I can differentiate . . . which is not true."
• "Come on: just say anything and I'll tell you you're wrong."

On a different planet
• "I decided to do this for reasons I cannot even understand myself."
• "If John is a giraffe then Katie has blue hair: who is Peter?"
• "This [method of proof] is like a big country with big tanks surrounding a small country: I make the agreement and you have to agree with it."
• "So with these operations, these predicates and this model, we see that everyone hates [Tony] Blair. I once taught this in a communist country and used Lenin instead of Blair. That caused big trouble."
• "Clap your hands: you've created a small density fluctuation. Either that's going to collapse into a black hole, or it's going to make sound."
• "You can sit there and wile away half an hour of your time going through these spectacularly boring proofs. It's quite fun."
• "This is embarrassingly not right-continuous."
• "They thought that the background radiation of the universe was just bird crap on their radio telescope. They cleaned it all off but the hiss persisted and so they finally figured out that it must be coming from the sky. I mean, bird crap comes from the sky too, but you know what I mean . . ."
• "'Every dodo works on Wall Street' is true."
• "So here's the fun part as far as creating a galaxy is concerned."
• "There is no such thing as enough."
• "This is the lecturing equivalent of walking and chewing gum at the same time - let's see if I can do it."
• "You can jump with joy when your sequence is monotone. The rest of the time, you can sit in your chair and sigh because it's not."
• "Otherwise we have uncountably many zeros in our vector space. Which is a bit embarrassing."
• "The Poisson distribution essentially models the number of people accidentally kicked to death by horses in the Prussian army over a 30 year period."
• "I know that you know this - I know equally well that you won't admit to knowing this."
• "Contour integration is good fun. On a cold winter's night, pull your chair up to the fire and do some. It's much better than watching TV. Not that that's saying much."
• "I think if I asked you whether you recognised your own grandmother you'd say 'No, I've never seen her before'."
• "There is a crowd of people - perverted people in my opinion - who think they can drive complex analysis out of number theory."
• "It's a little-known fact that 'Lekkerkerker' means 'Tasty Dungeon'. That won't be in the exam so you needn't write it down."
• "Gamma is what's called the gamma function. It's called the gamma function because it's written gamma."
• "'P' stands for too many things in mathematics: prime, point, polygon, polytope, parallelopiped . . . I'm just rambling, aren't I?"
• "I'm going to call this curly R because I like drawing curly R's."
• "I like breaking chalk - it gives me a feeling of power at the beginning of a lecture."
• "Who believes in Global Warming?"
• "Anyone a sailor here?"
• "They've been dumbing-down weather forecasts for 10 years now."
• "One of the classic problems is Los Angeles."
• "It's important to remind you that people at Imperial [College London] get things wrong."
• "There's a problem with this room: the oxygen goes out and you all fall asleep."
• "I'm sailing on a different sea now."
• "Will someone please tell me if I start jumping up and down?"
• "So the content of this theorem is that five people in this class share a birthday."
• "Just for fun, we'll invent two more numbers to add to the real line."
• "Don't think about [that] - these things are more terrible than you can imagine."
• "I've been behaving like a mother-in-law to simple functions - I haven't said a lot about them and it must seem like I don't care."
• "Look, if you don't like this nonsense I can tell you which rail company to complain to."
• "Since repetition is the mother of something, we'll do the proof."
• "The calculations will be beautifully crazy."