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There is a joke that your hammer will always find nails to hit. I find that perfectly acceptable

Benoit Mandelbrot

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Benoit Mandelbrot
Age: 85 †
Born: 1924
Born: November 20
Died: 2010
Died: October 14
Computer Scientist
Economist
Engineer
Mathematician
Professor
Scientist
Writer
Warszawa
Mandelbrot
B. B.‏
Benoît Mandelbrot
Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Acceptable
Joke
Perfectly
Jokes
Find
Always
Hammer
Hammers
Nails

More quotes by Benoit Mandelbrot

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Think of color, pitch, loudness, heaviness, and hotness. Each is the topic of a branch of physics
Benoit Mandelbrot
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There is a saying that every nice piece of work needs the right person in the right place at the right time.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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There are very complex shapes which would be the same from close by and far away.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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I went to the computer and tried to experiment. I introduced a very high level of experiment in very pure mathematics.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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The straight line has a property of self-similarity. Each piece of the straight line is the same as the whole line when used to a big or small extent.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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Everybody in mathematics had given up for 100 years or 200 years the idea that you could from pictures, from looking at pictures, find new ideas. That was the case long ago in the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, in later periods, but then mathematicians had become very abstract.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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I didn't feel comfortable at first with pure mathematics, or as a professor of pure mathematics. I wanted to do a little bit of everything and explore the world.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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A fractal is a way of seeing infinity.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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The techniques I developed for studying turbulence, like weather, also apply to the stock market
Benoit Mandelbrot
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When the weather changes and hurricanes hit, nobody believes that the laws of physics have changed. Similarly, I don't believe that when the stock market goes into terrible gyrations its rules have changed. It's the same stock market with the same mechanisms and the same people.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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The theory of probability is the only mathematical tool available to help map the unknown and the uncontrollable. It is fortunate that this tool, while tricky, is extraordinarily powerful and convenient.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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Smooth shapes are very rare in the wild but extremely important in the ivory tower and the factory.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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I conceived and developed a new geometry of nature and implemented its use in a number of diverse fields. It describes many of the irregular and fragmented patterns around us, and leads to full-fledged theories, by identifying a family of shapes I call fractals.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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I didn't want to become a pure mathematician, as a matter of fact, my uncle was one, so I knew what the pure mathematician was and I did not want to be a pure - I wanted to do something different.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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The beauty of what I happened by extraordinary chance to put together is that nobody would have believed that this is possible, and certainly I didn't expect that it was possible. I just moved from step to step to step.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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An extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in inventing something.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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Asking the right questions is as important as answering them
Benoit Mandelbrot
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Unfortunately, the world has not been designed for the convenience of mathematicians.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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Some mathematicians didn't even perceive of the possibility of a picture being helpful. To the contrary, I went into an orgy of looking at pictures by the hundreds the machines became a little bit better.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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Engineering is too important to wait for science.
Benoit Mandelbrot