John H. Conway > Quotes

“You know, people think mathematics is complicated. Mathematics is the simple bit. It's the stuff we can understand. It's cats that are complicated. I mean, what is it in those little molecules and stuff that make one cat behave differently than another, or that make a cat? And how do you define a cat? I have no idea.”
― John H. Conway

“It is because the ancients made astronomical calculations in base 60 that we still use this system for measuring time, dividing an hour into 60 minutes, and a minute into 60 seconds. In its path through the heavens, the sun takes roughly 360 days (actually 365.242199) to describe a complete circle, so it seems that the Babylonians divided a complete circle into 360 degrees (°).”
― John H. Conway, The Book of Numbers