The total number of Dirichlet's publications is not large: jewels are not weighed on a grocery scale.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Dirichlet’s few works are few but valuable, like jewels not weighed on a grocery scale.
- In plain terms
- Quality outweighs quantity in scholarship.
- What can you take from it?
- Value impact over sheer number of publications.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- How can we better assess scholarly quality?
- What incentives favor quantity over quality?
Another view
Metrics often prioritize quantity.
More from Carl Friedrich Gauss
Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders.
Permalink to quote #21 When a philosopher says something that is true then it is trivial. When he says something that is not trivial then it is false.
Permalink to quote #23 Life stands before me like an eternal spring with new and brilliant clothes.
Permalink to quote #20
Related quotes
He was a learned man, of immense reading, but is much blamed for his unfaithfull quotations.
John AubreyJohn Aubrey quote #12 If your result needs a statistician then you should design a better experiment.
Ernest RutherfordErnest Rutherford quote #9 This paper is so bad it is not even wrong.
Wolfgang PauliWolfgang Pauli quote #14