Richard Hamming
Richard Hamming
Richard Wesley Hammingwas an American mathematician whose work had many implications for computer engineering and telecommunications. His contributions include the Hamming code, the Hamming window, Hamming numbers, sphere-packing, and the Hamming distance...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth11 February 1915
CityChicago, IL
CountryUnited States of America
small-problems errors tree
When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did [Claude Elwood] Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you.
believe greatness errors
Most people like to believe something is or is not true. Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very well. They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement theory. If you believe too much you'll never notice the flaws; if you doubt too much you won't get started. It requires a lovely balance.
people time
If you read all the time what other people have done, you will the think the way they thought.
good learn rather scientists system work
Good scientists will fight the system rather than learn to work with the system.
answers carefully change clear correct people problem reasonably refuse slightly until
If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what creative people do - get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to look at any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one.
emotion point song technical women
The emotion at the point of technical breakthrough is better than wine, women and song put together.
science way problem
It is better to do the right problem the wrong way than the wrong problem the right way.
people mind trying
You can tell other people all the alibis you want. I don't mind. But to yourself try to be honest.
simple sheep effectiveness
I have tried, with little success, to get some of my friends to understand my amazement that the abstraction of integers for counting is both possible and useful. Is it not remarkable that 6 sheep plus 7 sheep makes 13 sheep; that 6 stones plus 7 stones make 13 stones? Is it not a miracle that the universe is so constructed that such a simple abstraction as a number is possible? To me this is one of the strongest examples of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics. Indeed, I find it both strange and unexplainable.
toes computer scientist
Mathematicians stand on each others' shoulders and computer scientists stand on each others' toes.
science thinking people
There are wavelengths that people cannot see, there are sounds that people cannot hear, and maybe computers have thoughts that people cannot think.
thinking substitutes typing
Typing is no substitute for thinking.
years doors office
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.
opportunity thinking two
Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity. I don`t want to give you a rate, but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime.