Ivars Peterson

The theory of probability combines commonsense reasoning with calculation. It domesticates luck, making it subservient to reason.

— Ivars Peterson

Ramsey theory implies that complete disorder is impossible. Somehow, no matter how complicated, chaotic, or random something appears, deep within that morass lurks a smaller entity that has a definite structure. Striking regularities are bound to arise even in a universe that has no rules.

— Ivars Peterson

In mathematics, in science, and in life, we constantly face the delicate, tricky task of separating design from happenstance.

— Ivars Peterson

Most coincidences are simply chance events that turn out to be far more probable than many people imagine.

— Ivars Peterson

Tversky was fond of describing his work as “debugging human intuition.”...Tversky could establish again and again the existence of mismatches between intuition and probability—between cognitive illusion and reality.

— Ivars Peterson

Indeed, mathematics is full of conjectures—questions waiting for answers—with no assurance that the answers even exist.

— Ivars Peterson

The aim of science is to reduce the scope of chance.

— Ivars Peterson

Randomness, chaos, uncertainty, and chance are all a part of our lives. They reside at the ill-defined boundaries between what we know, what we can know, and what is beyond our knowing. They make life interesting.

— Ivars Peterson

More often than not, a piece of mathematics worked out years before—and believed to be totally without practical value—finds a role in the “real” world.

— Ivars Peterson

To an increasing number of practitioners, computer simulations rooted in mathematics represent a third way of doing science, alongside theory and experiment.

— Ivars Peterson

As the mathematician Clifford Taubes noted, “Physics is the study of the world, while mathematics is the study of all possible worlds.” Thus, mathematics unveils the infinite possibilities; physics pinpoints the few that structure our universe and our existence.

— Ivars Peterson