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It may be said In research, if you know what you are doing, then you shouldn't be doing it. In a sense, if the answer turns out to be exactly what you expected, then you have learned nothing new, although you may have had your confidence increased somewhat.

Richard Hamming

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Richard Hamming
Age: 82 †
Born: 1915
Born: February 11
Died: 1998
Died: January 7
Computer Scientist
Engineer
Mathematician
Chicago
Illinois
Richard Wesley Hamming
Richard W. Hamming
Science
Confidence
Sense
Research
May
Answer
Increased
Nothing
Learned
Somewhat
Learning
Shouldn
Answers
Expected
Knowledge
Although
Turns
Exactly

More quotes by Richard Hamming

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It is better to do the right problem the wrong way than the wrong problem the right way.
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Mathematicians stand on each others' shoulders and computer scientists stand on each others' toes.
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What you learn from others you can use to follow. What you learn for yourself you can use to lead.
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Perhaps the central problem we face in all of computer science is how we are to get to the situation where we build on top of the work of others rather than redoing so much of it in a trivially different way.
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The real problem is what can man and machine do together and not in competition.
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Does anyone believe that the difference between the Lebesgue and Riemann integrals can have physical significance, and that whether say, an airplane would or would not fly could depend on this difference? If such were claimed, I should not care to fly in that plane.
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Beware of finding what you're looking for. A favorite aphorism he often used.
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One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage. Once you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems, then you can. If you think you can't, almost surely you are not going to.
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Good teachers deserve apples great teachers deserve chocolate. A favorite quotation, written in calligraphy on his office door.
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You can tell other people all the alibis you want. I don't mind. But to yourself try to be honest.
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If you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But ten years later somehow, you dont quite know what problems are worth working on.
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Typing is no substitute for thinking.
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Often the great scientists, by turning the problem around a bit, changed a defect to an asset. For example, many scientists when they found they couldn't do a problem finally began to study why not. They then turned it around the other way and said, But of course, this is what it is and got an important result.
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Science is composed of laws which were originally based on a small, carefully selected set of observations, often not very accurately measured originally but the laws have later been found to apply over much wider ranges of observations and much more accurately than the original data justified.
Richard Hamming
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True greatness is when your name is like ampere, watt, and fourier-when it's spelled with a lower case letter.
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There are wavelengths that people cannot see, there are sounds that people cannot hear, and maybe computers have thoughts that people cannot think.
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What are the important problems of your field?
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Put glibly: In science if you know what you are doing you should not be doing it. In engineering if you do not know what you are doing you should not be doing it. Of course, you seldom, if ever, see either pure state.
Richard Hamming