Stars and Bars Combinatorics/proofs

Famous quotes containing the words stars, bars and/or proofs:

    Then, that no region of the universe
    Should remain void of life, the floor of heaven
    Was peopled with the stars and godlike forms,
    The seas became the abode of glittering fish.
    Earth took the beasts and mobile air the birds.
    A holier animal was wanting.
    Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)

    The last public hanging in the State took place in 1835 on Prince Hill.... On the fatal day, the victim, a man named Watkins, peering through the iron bars of his cell, and seeing the townfolk scurrying to the place of execution, is said to have remarked, ‘Why is everyone running? Nothing can happen until I get there.’
    —Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    To invent without scruple a new principle to every new phenomenon, instead of adapting it to the old; to overload our hypothesis with a variety of this kind, are certain proofs that none of these principles is the just one, and that we only desire, by a number of falsehoods, to cover our ignorance of the truth.
    David Hume (1711–1776)