David J. Griffiths
- Introduction to Quantum Mechanics
The statistical interpretation introduces a kind of indeterminacy into quantum mechanics, for even if you know everything the theory has to tell you about the particle (to wit: its wave function), still you cannot predict with certainty the outcome of a simple experiment to measure its position - all quantum mechanics has to offer is statistical information about the possible results. This indeterminacy has been profoundly disturbing to physicists and philosophers alike.
David J. Griffiths
In a mathematical sense this is all applied group theory - what we are talking about is the decomposition of the direct product of two irreducible representations of the rotation group into a direct sum of irreducible representations (you can quote that, to impress your friends).
