Danica McKellar Quotes

We have a culture where it’s OK to not know anything about mathematics whereas in Asia, they don’t

I noticed there were so many people, especially women, who would come up to me having recognized me from TV and say, 'I heard you were a math person, why math? Oh my gosh, I could never do math!' I could just see their self-esteem crumbling; I thought that was silly, so I wanted to make math more friendly and accessible.

My main concern with the condition of mathematics in high school is that there's a lot of fear involved! Math is not, generally speaking, presented in a fun way. The concepts, as I see them, are fun, and that's the way I'd like to convey them myself.

I was performing at a New Jersey high school, and I asked a class of 2,000 students, 'How many of you love mathematics?' and only one hand went up. And that was the hand of the maths teacher!

I have been running maths clubs for children completely free. In my building in Bangalore, I conduct maths clubs for several months, and every child who attended the club was poor in mathematics and is now showing brilliant results.

In fact, NSF was the leading successful efforts to improve U.S. math and science education long before the Department of Education was even created.

Pictures were completely eliminated from mathematics; in particular when I was young this happened in a very strong fashion.

President Obama said he plans on training 10,000 new math and science teachers. How about teaching math to that economic team of his?

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.

The No Child Left Behind Program was an incentive to the schools to get their kids up to snuff on math and science and reading.

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.

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

In high school, a teacher once suggested that I be a math major in college. I thought, 'Me? You've got to be joking!' I mean, in junior high, I used to come home and cry because I was so afraid of my math homework. Seriously, I was terrified of math.

We need to make education so much fun that students can't help but learn.

I was a math guy as a kid. I was really good at math. I wasn't particularly interested in it.

I would hope that maybe math teachers could use 'Prime Baby' as a way of establishing an emotional connection between students and numbers.

My elementary education was at Christ Church infant school and St. Stephen's junior school. At St. Stephen's, I encountered my first real mentor, the headmaster Mr. Broakes. He must have spotted something unusual in me, for he spent lots of time encouraging my interest in mathematics.

Go to a job interview and tell and employer that you can recite the 17 times table; they don't care. Why are we still teaching it?

Stand firm in your refusal to remain conscious during algebra. In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.

By seventh grade, I was committed to mathematics.

Usually, girls weren't encouraged to go to college and major in math and science. My high school calculus teacher, Ms. Paz Jensen, made math appealing and motivated me to continue studying it in college.

I love math and was a math teacher for many years, so it was fun for me to write several math books, including 'Fraction Fun,' 'Calculator Riddles,' and 'Shape Up!' 'Fun with Triangles and Other Polygons.'

At the age of 12, I developed an intense interest in mathematics. On exposure to algebra, I was fascinated by simultaneous equations and read ahead of the class to the end of the book.

I had done quite a bit of research about math education when I spoke before Congress in 2000 about the importance of women in mathematics. The session of Congress was all about raising more scholarships for girls in college. I told them I felt that it's too late by college.

I have written a book called 'In the Wonderland of Numbers.' It's about a young girl, Neha, who is very poor in mathematics, but in a series of illusory experiences, she becomes a great mathematician.