UNKNOWN QUANTITY • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Unknown quantity

"Unknown quantity" Quotes from Famous Books

... unconscious of the fact that the eyes of many of the students were fixed upon him with keen observation. The self-contained young professor was as much an unknown quantity as any he asked them to find in the recitation-room. They were baffled by the impersonal attitude he had brought from the university, where the individual counted for little, and were inclined to attribute it to a disposition to be severe ...

— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... it is an unknown quantity here, as we in Australia understand it. These people simply squat down wherever they can find a natural catchment for water. There is no clearing to be done, as the land is quite devoid of timber. They put nigger labour on, and build a farmhouse. ...

— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... at the time of its upper or lower culmination, it would give the true meridian at once, but this involves a knowledge of the true local time of transit, or the longitude of the place of observation, which is generally an unknown quantity; and moreover, as the star is then moving east or west, or at right angles to the place of the meridian, at the rate of 15 of arc in about one hour, an error of so slight a quantity as only four seconds ...

— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various

... contended that out of four million children of school age only one-half were receiving instruction, whilst not more than one-eighth were attending schools which were subject to inspection. The vast majority were to be found in schools where the standard of education, if not altogether an unknown quantity, was deplorably low. He proposed that the number of inspectors should be increased, and that a rate should be levied by the local authorities for supplying adequate instruction in places where it was unsatisfactory. He contended ...

— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... native with his omnipotence and magic. This system of the application of political science as well as of military science, of course, was sound, save for a temperamental error: the lack of sufficient imagination to realize the unknown quantity of chance, the inevitable mistake of military scientists who are loath to admit the artist to their counsels, exemplified by men of genius, such as Napoleon and Leonardo da Vinci, who were both mathematicians ...

— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

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