Hannah Fry

“Every time you shop online, every time you sign up for a newsletter, or register on a website, or enquire about a new car, or fill out a warranty card, or buy a new home, or register to vote - you are unwittingly handing over a small clue as to who you are and how you behave.”

“I'm writing a book called 'The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus' about the maths of Christmas: how to set up a secret Santa so it's totally fair; how to decorate your tree mathematically; how to win at Monopoly.”

“The best couples, or the most successful couples, are the ones with a really low negativity threshold. These are the couples that don't let anything go unnoticed and allow each other some room to complain.”

“I certainly think there are some skills we'll lose as we hand things over to automation. I can barely remember my own phone number now, let alone the long list of numbers I used to know, and my handwriting has completely gone to pot.”

“When you don't have diversity in the creative process, you inevitably end up with a single, narrow perspective in the output.”

“Writing about 'What is art?' is not something I ever thought I'd be doing.”

“One of the first things I did when I finished my Ph.D. was work with the police to look at what happened during the London riots in 2011, which took over the city.”

“We literally hand over our most private data, our DNA, but we're not just consenting for ourselves, we are consenting for our children, and our children's children. Maybe we don't live in a world where people are genetically discriminated against now, but who's to say in 100 years that we won't?”

“Algorithms and data should support the human decision, not replace it.”

“But for me, true art can't be created by accident. There are boundaries to the reach of algorithms. Limits to what can be quantified. Among all of the staggeringly impressive, mindboggling things that data and statistics can tell me, how it feels to be human isn't one of them.”

“Wind depends on temperature. Temperature depends on pressure. And pressure depends on wind. It's an intricate mathematical tapestry that is far too intertwined to unpick by hand.”

“The Gottman Institute's study about arguments in long-term relationships concludes that couples with the best chance at long-term success are the ones with a low negativity threshold: if something's wrong, they speak up about it immediately. That's something I've taken on board.”

“Curating our data is valuable. Like 23andMe - while selling us the chance to know whether we're Vikings or whatever, they're amassing these huge DNA databases that are unimaginably valuable. Get people to pay you to add their DNA to this database. Genius!”

“And anytime a programmer makes a decision about how to deal with data, how to average it or clean it, you're imparting more of your own bias on it.”

“One of the problems maths struggles with is that it's invisible. We haven't got explosions on our side.”

“When it comes to love, making long-term decisions is a risky business. Sooner or later, most of us decide to leave our carefree bachelor or bachelorette days behind us and settle down.”

“The most successful relationships are ones with a really low negativity threshold. In those relationships, couples allow each other to complain, and work together to constantly repair the tiny issues between them. In such cases, couples don't bottle up their feelings, and little things don't end up being blown completely out of proportion.”

“Everything we're doing online is being not just monitored, but that information is being packaged up and sold and resold to manipulate us.”

“Imagine life without any algorithms at all, you wouldn't be able to do anything. This is already completely encompassing. We have a habit of over-trusting what mathematics or computer scientists tell us to do, without questioning it, too much faith in the magical power of analysis.”

“History is littered with examples of objects and inventions with a power beyond their professed purpose. Sometimes it's deliberately and maliciously factored into their design, but at other times, it's a result of thoughtless omissions.”