In the abstract world of American economists, equations run both ways; they believe that by changing the sign of a variable from plus to minus or from minus to plus or the price and quantity of x or y, the direction of historical movement can be reversed.
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Chapter Eight, International Finance, p. 336Robert Gilpin
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I had a feeling once about Mathematics, that I saw it all—Depth beyond depth was revealed to me—the Byss and the Abyss. I saw, as one might see the transit of Venus—or even the Lord Mayor's Show, a quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly how it happened and why the tergiversation was inevitable: and how the one step involved all the others. It was like politics. But it was after dinner and I let it go!
Winston Churchill
Minus times minus equals plus,
The reason for this we need not discuss.Wystan Hugh Auden
Think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one: you can never see any concrete proof that it exists, but if you include it in your equations, you can calculate all manner of things that couldn’t be imagined without it.
Philip Pullman
A function of a variable quantity is an analytic expression composed in any way whatsoever of the variable quantity and numbers or constant quantities.
Leonhard Euler
Gilpin, Robert
Gilpin, William
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