There’s a quote that I have rattling around in my head that I can’t quite remember. The quote was of the form “___ is more interesting as a source of questions than a source of answers.” I don’t remember what went in the blank (the Brauer group, maybe?) or who said it, so if anyone happens to know I’d appreciate it.
The female?
There was poli sci paper that I dimly recall that included “stupidity” as a possibly explanatory factor for something or other, and had some sort of sentence much like you describe, suggesting that we can’t just write things off to people being stupid, even though the causes of them being stupid might be valid research areas…
An exam? (This gets more inane the more you think about it.)
Also…
The paradox of disappointed expectations?
What the heck is that?
Behold, it’s already working!
This blog entry?
Koray: funny.
From “Mathematical Reflections: In a Room With Many Mirrors” by Peter John Hilton, Jean Pedersen, p. 328 (google books)
“Geometry is a source of questions, algebra is a source of answers. Geometry provides ideas, inspiration, insight; algebra provides clarification and systematic solution”.
Close enough?
Well it’s not on the web, so whoever said it didn’t even have a blog. So it can’t be very important.
I recall something like that said having been said about Gromov’s treatise.
What is a self-answering question that is more interesting as a source of questions than a source of answers, and also containing an apparently unmotivated mention of the word “hippodrome?”
Jabob: I’m sure you think that your question is its own answer (thus self-answering), but it fails to contain an apparently unmotivated mention of the word “hippodrome”. In fact, the mention of the word “hippodrome” is very specifically motivated by the attempt to make this question appear to be self-answering, but since there is such an apparent motivation, it can’t be its own answer.
Who is “Jabob?” Is this a contraction of “Jay Bob,” as in “Jay Bob, git yer pick-up an’ brang some hay to the west forty!?”
You can’t really pin a motive on “hippodrome” specifically, even by alleging “intent to be funny” in addition to the other charges, since any other member of the family of curious words would serve as well, and even the larger family is perfectly dispensable, if “…containing an apparently unmotivated mention…” is replaced by “…eliciting a misspelling of the name “Jacob.”
So “hippodrome” walks on all charges, math cop, and you get to spend the next six years handing out arithmetic tickets on Staten Island!
(By the way, The Unapologetic Mathematician is prominently displayed on my blogroll at Daily Kos.)
John Armstrong has retreated from the field after one condescending remark (”I’m sure you think that your question is its own answer…”), and I can’t really blame him, since “self-answering questions” are a very difficult subject.
“Self-answering questions” are such peculiar entities that it’s fair to say every “self-answering question” raises more questions than it self-answers, but unfortunately if you ask the typical “self-answering question” any of the interesting questions that it raises, the “self-answering question” refuses to answer them!
This brings us back to the notorious discussion of the written word in the Phaedrus:
“I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.”
It’s an odd sort of retreat. Seems rather like an impromptu sparring match one morning at the gym. One boxer finishes practice and leaves to go to work. The other hangs around the ring and declares victory right before the gym closes.
One boxer, apparently some sort of unemployed palooka, hangs around the ring until the gym closes. The other boxer leaves for work in the Condescension Department of a local university.
Later that night the employed boxer dreams a terrible dream. He can’t escape from a miserable asylum where his flat-affect fellow patients have names like Philately, Numismatics. and Computer Repair.
“Let me out,” he screams. “I don’t belong in isolation with these boring freaks! I play an essential role in every science!”
“So do I,” say Computer Repair, “and they won’t let me out either.”
Wake up, John! It was just a bad dream, and the gym never closes.
But unless you can punch your way out of it, instead of running away after one little jab, you’ll be back at the same old party with Mr. Philately tomorrow night.
Easy, fellas… this is getting close to a flame war, and over what?
Let’s talk about something else… how about some math?
I think they’re both joking.