Winnie Wrote a Math Book

SoyChemist writes "Hollywood is not known for providing a wealth of positive female role models. Danica McKellar, the actress that played Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years and Elsie Snuffin on The West Wing, has written a math book for teenage girls. 'Math Doesn't Suck' is done in the style of a teen magazine. It even includes a horoscope, cute doodles of shoes and jewelry, and testimonials from attractive young career women that use math at work. It focuses on fractions and pre-algebra and uses mnemonics like calling a reciprocal a 'refliprocal', because you just take the fraction and flip it upside down. Wired interviewed McKellar about the new book and her crusade to eliminate the achievement gap between boys and girls in math courses. McKellar graduated Summa Cum Laude from UCLA. While studying there, she co-authored a proof and presented it at a conference. After she and Mayim Bialik — star of Blossom and a PhD in neuroscience — appeared in a 20/20 episode about intellectual actresses, several literary agents came knocking on her door."

Comments

Review of the book and an interview

[hey hey hey]

Tara Smith, a Professor of Epidemiology, and author of the science blog Aetiology (which I like) reviewed the book here , and has a short interview with Danica.

Re:Barbie disagrees

[porcupine8]

Actually, the quote is "Math class is tough," and only 1.5% of all Teen Talk Barbies said that phrase. If you find one now, it's worth quite a bit of money. (And I'll bet more than 1.5% of the population actually thinks that math class is tough.)

</barbienerd>

Re:Barbie disagrees

[natedubbya]

I'm still amazed at how people still push to help girls succeed. It makes me think it has become a larger political issue about advancing women's views, and not because they are actually struggling. All the recent evidence points to girls succeeding beyond boys, and yet, where are the pro-boy programs? You will always be able to point out a specific area of work that men outnumber women, or vice versa, but that doesn't mean we should rectify that "problem". There's a much larger issue where boys are being left behind.

Women have outnumbered men at colleges for ~25 years now. Women outnumber men 58% to 42%.

75 percent of girls aim for college degrees vs. 66 percent of boys

The study found that not only are girls in the nation's 100 largest school districts graduating at a ">72 percent rate versus 65 percent for their male counterparts, but that the gender gap is even wider among minority students.