Influence
- It has been translated into several languages and has sold over a million copies, and has been continuously in print since its first publication.
- Marvin Minsky said in his influential paper Steps Toward Artificial Intelligence that "everyone should know the work of George Pólya on how to solve problems."
- Pólya's book has had a large influence on mathematics textbooks as evidenced by the bibliographies for mathematics education.
- Russian physicist Zhores I. Alfyorov, (Nobel laureate in 2000) praised it, saying he was very pleased with Pólya's famous book.
- Russian inventor Genrich Altshuller developed an elaborate set of methods for problem solving known as TRIZ, which in many aspects reproduces or parallels Pólya's work.
Read more about this topic: How To Solve It
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“Temperament is the natural, inborn style of behavior of each individual. It’s the how of behavior, not the why.... The question is not, “Why does he behave a certain way if he doesn’t get a cookie?” but rather, “When he doesn’t get a cookie, how does he express his displeasure...?” The environment—and your behavior as a parent—can influence temperament and interplay with it, but it is not the cause of temperamental characteristics.”
—Stanley Turecki (20th century)
“For character too is a process and an unfolding ... among our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a little spotted with commonness; who is a little pinched here and protruberent there with native prejudices; or whose better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong channel under the influence of transient solicitations?”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)