Paradoxes and curiosities

The pseudomath

The pseudomath is a person who handles mathematics as a monkey handles the razor. The creature tried to shave himself as he had seen his master do; but, not having any notion of the angle at which the razor was to be held, he cut his own throat.

He never tried it a second time, poor animal! but the pseudomath keeps on in his work, proclaims himself clean shaved, and all the rest of the world hairy.

The graphomath is a person who, having no mathematics, attempts to describe a mathematician.

Novelists perform in this way: even Walter Scott now and then burns his fingers.

His dreaming calculator, Davy Ramsay, swears “by the bones of the immortal Napier.” Scott thought that the philomaths worshipped relics: so they do in one sense.—De Morgan, A. Budget of Paradoxes (London, 1872)...

Paradoxes and curiosities

The following verses read the same whether read forward or backward:—

Aspice! nam raro mittit timor arma, nec ipsa
Si se mente reget, non tegeret Nemesis;

also,

Sator Arepo tenet opera rotas.

—Heis, Eduard.

Algebraische Aufgaben (Köln, 1898), p. 328.

Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; or, the Philomath's Quotation-Book, New York, 1914.

Photo: Pixabay/Panjtanpak_graphics05

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