Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Danica McKellar

Remember Winnie Cooper? Y'know, from The Wonder Years on TV in the late 80's and early 90's. Well, I just read a little bit of her 'then-and-now' bio and I must say I am inspired. She does math! And very well! She majored in it Summa Cum freakin' Laude, co-authored some physics paper, and even offers math pedagogy on her website!

She does math! Wow!

She does other stuff too, y'know. She still acts, does filmmaking, keeps up with the charity work, and did quite a jaw-dropping photoshoot for Stuff magazine.

I enjoyed reading her math Q&A section from her website. That's what set off the inspiration. I'd always thought of mathematics as an enigma, so to find people who take the time to explain it all sufficiently and with patience...well, I just find that impressive and commendable. I've met very few who've done this, especially in my times of need, and so I just had to email her like some giddy and obsessed fan. I thanked her for her explanations and asked if there's any higher math topic she has yet to study. I'd probably go bonkers if she replied. See, I have turned into a looney zealot.

Anyway, now I feel like cracking open my calc text and digging into some integrals. Hmmm, yummy yummy!

Nighty night.
--well

ps:
1. Danica endorses FigureThis.org for some fun math activities for the young ones.
2. Here's the link for more 'then-and-now' celebrities.

1 comment:

rickumali said...

I don't do a lot of math these days, but I felt the math bug when I was at my last job. The computers there were used to solve image and signal processing problems (think radars, and Photoshop). The problems involved knowing 'the Fast Fourier transform' (which I had to admit is a cool name for a math formula). I learned the computer coding behind it, but not the math, and that made me want to take some sort of learning program so that I could "get it." For a variety of reasons, I didn't pursue that. But I felt the bug, and I know how you feel.