Math Wonders for Girls
ALLENTOWN, Pa. _ As dream girl Winnie Cooper on the 1980s award-winning drama “The Wonder Years,” Danica McKellar showed middle school girls it was cool to be smart (even if you got better grades than your boyfriend).
Now the actress, who went on to become a mathematician after graduating summa cum laude from University of California, Los Angeles, wants to show a new generation of girls that math can be exciting, fun and even “beautiful.”
“I love math,” McKellar says. “I am extremely passionate about showing girls that math can be easy and fun.”
In her newly released book, “Math Doesn’t Suck,” McKellar uses tween-friendly tools, such as shopping for sales and slicing a pizza, to help middle school girls understand the concepts of fractions, decimals and percentages.
She’s hoping to introduce girls to the joys of a “math high.”
“I love the feeling you get when you reason a problem out,” she says. “It’s an exhilaration and gratifying feeling to overcome a challenge.”
McKellar says she drew on her signature role for the book, which is subtitled “How to survive middle school math without losing your mind or breaking a nail” and is delivered in a breezy “girlfriend” style.
“`The Wonder Years’ was based on a time of life that is very tumultuous,” McKellar says. “There is so much going on and it’s a time when math scores, especially for girls, drop.”
Having played the quintessential girl who is both smart and popular, McKellar, 32, says she still can relate to what girls are thinking about at that age and understands the fears that surround math.
“Math has a reputation for being hard,” she says. “I remember when I hit seventh grade and suddenly things weren’t so easy. Luckily, I had a couple teachers who showed me that math can be fun. Once I got over my fear, I became a math major.”
McKellar even co-authored a new mathematical theorem that now bears her name _ The Chayes-McKellar-Winn Theorem.
Now, her goal is to help other girls overcome their fear. She invites middle school girls to take her “Are You a Mathophobe?” quiz in the beginning of her book to find out if they could benefit from her novel approach.
“Math is a foreign language, essentially,” she says. “Math is stimulating and challenging. I love the patterns in numbers.”
While math is generally presented in a dry, not-much-fun way in schools, McKellar says the concepts actually are fun and her goal is to present them differently so that young girls can relate to them.
Math terms like mixed numbers and improper fractions are explained in terminology teens understand, like tennis shoes and high heels.
She suggests thinking of mixed numbers (i.e., 1 {) as high heels and improper fractions (i.e., 3/2) as tennis shoes. Whenever you have work to be done, it’s smarter to slip on your tennis shoes than wear your high heels. So, whenever you have a math problem to solve, it’s smarter, or easier, to use your tennis shoe number or improper fraction to solve that problem, she says.
McKellar offers this kind of teen-friendly logic chapter after an instructional chapter.
She also offers tips for different kinds of learners _ visual, auditory or tactile _ and helps girls figure out what kind of learner they are. Knowing your learning style, she says, is an important success tool.
McKellar also wants to send a message that girls can be glamorous and popular, as well as smart.
“Smart is sexy,” she says. “I’m not trying to say every girl will be a mathematician, but I want every girl to know she can do it.”
When she started writing the book, she drew on techniques she used in school to memorize formulas as well as build confidence and combat test anxiety.
“You can be in control of the experience,” she says.
Most gratifying are the e-mails and comments she gets from girls who say they now understand math.
“I’m getting such a great response. When they say, `I used to hate math and now I love it,’ it makes me want to cry. I think this is the best job in the world.”
Although the writing process took months longer and was “three times as much work” as she anticipated, McKellar says she will probably write a second book.
“This feels great,” she says. “It’s like I’ve found the thing I’m supposed to do as a spokesperson for math helping to empower young girls.”
Although she says the book has been taking up most of her time, McKellar has still had time for the small screen although she says “it doesn’t feel as important right now.”
She is currently starring in the title role of an ongoing Lifetime Web series “Inspector Mom,” and Monday reprised a guest role as a “one-night stand” on the CBS comedy “How I Met Your Mother.”
She also has released “Daily Dose of Dharma,” a yoga and meditation DVD she did with her mother Mahaila McKellar and will be in a movie on the Sci-Fi channel next year.
___
(c) 2007, The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.)
Visit The Morning Call at http://www.mcall.com/
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.