DANICA MCKELLAR

When girls are asking themselves 'Who am I?' for the first time and they hear all this bad PR about math, they think, 'Well, whoever I am, I'm not somebody who likes math.'

The fun little proofs that you can do with algebra - they are sort of like crowd pleasers in a way. Like, the .9 repeating equaling one. It doesn't take a lot of algebra to prove that, and it's really fun. It kind of wows people. It's like they're watching magic happen right before their eyes.

When you know that you can overcome challenges, you do gain that self-respect, and then you won't end up in a situation that you regret later on.

I want to help middle-school girls stay interested in math and be good at it, and see it as friendly and accessible and not this scary thing. Everyone else in society tells them it's not for them. It's for nerdy white guys with pocket protectors.

If anyone tells you it's impossible to be fabulous and smart and make a ton of money using math, well, they can just get in line behind you - and kiss your math.

I was born in San Diego, and we moved to Los Angeles when I was seven. A couple of years later, I started acting!

When I was little, we had a Golden Book that had all these Disney characters in one portrait on the first page. My dad used to read from it every night. We'd play this game of find Pluto or find Donald Duck. He'd read us stories and do all the voices. Those are great memories.

There is an epidemic right now of girls dumbing themselves down... in middle school because they think it makes them attractive.

I went to about one frat party a year. A year seemed to be enough time for me to forget how much I didn't like frat parties, and my friends would eventually convince me to go to one. Cheap beer, guys looking for a quick hook-up, and girls playing 'dumb' to get in on the hook-up. I just never got into it.

I didn't think that college math was for me. I didn't think I'd be able to hack it. And that perception of math not being for girls, not being for girls who see themselves as socially well adjusted has got to change.

I tell students that even if they don't like math right now, they can use math as a brain-sharpening tool - a tool that not only builds the foundation for a great career, but that also builds self-confidence, no matter what they choose to do with their lives.

It delights me that I don't fit the stereotype of an actress.

What I got which was unusual, especially as a child actress, was parents who believed that Hollywood was not that important. They told us education, family, health, all come first and they meant it.

I recognize that I have a unique position to be a role model to young girls because I am doing something that they consider glamorous, which is acting, and yet I took a time to really get my education and study mathematics, and I think math is the cat's meow.

I just did a spread in 'Maxim', I'm 35 years old. I've had women and parents email me asking if I should really be doing that, since I'm still considered a role model.

A lot of girls think they have to choose between being the smart geeky type or the beautiful bimbo.

Math has a lot of negative stereotypes, but it can actually be fun and incredibly empowering.

My husband is a composer, so he plays piano all the time and I sit there and clap telling my unborn child, 'Hear me clap, hear the music.' I know music, in general, is supposed to be good for babies to hear.

I've always been really cautious about guys who have a Winnie Cooper fantasy, and I'm so glad about that. I mean, I can count on one hand the guys I've been with. It was really challenging, but I never gave it up too soon, if you know what I mean.

Find your self-respect now. Don't dumb yourselves down. Think of yourself as capable and worthy of finding a guy who is going to respect you, too. It's so important, I mean, and the confidence you get from feeling smart and tackling something like mathematics, which is a challenge, right? Math is hard.

So somebody told me that if I wasn't a coffee drinker yet, by the end of college I'd have to be, because a math major is so tough I would have to stay up very late. I was going to need coffee to do that. Well, merely because they said that, I never drank coffee in college, never got addicted to it, never needed it.

A reciprocal of a fraction is found by flipping it upside down. If you want the reciprocal of a mixed number or a whole number, just convert it to an improper fraction, and then flip it!

Let's make math fun and sexy and glamorous. Smart is sexy, that's one of my main messages.

Let's face it; by and large math is not easy, but that's what makes it so rewarding when you conquer a problem, and reach new heights of understanding.

Believe it or not, lots of people change their majors and abandon their dreams just to avoid a couple of math classes in college.