Author [link|http://jennyw.dangerousideas.com/2006/7/15/actress-danica-mckellar-writes-math-doesn-t-suck-book-for-girls|Danica McKellar] ['06 link] and bevy of femme math folk aboard, Int'l Math Olympics winners et al -- addressing the sterotypes about gurrrls --> {ugh}=math -- and this apparently scintillating book, written to defuse that Old Husband's tale. (She also acts)

Reading math books for fun? - you betcha. [link|http://www.wired.com/culture/education/news/2007/08/winniecooper_QA| Wired's] take.
(This == one of those thousands of reasons one sends $$ to the %infinitesimal of American producers of programs with any substance.)

So if you have Daughters.. Buy This Book. Or Sons, for that matter..
Searching on title gets (75K!) related links, reviews, p\ufffdans -- teaching aids. This book is written for the student (though also recommended by teachers, some of whom would like to see also - a teacher 'assist-version'.)

(Wish I'd seen a similar opus, way-back. Most math teaching Has Sucked, IME, in these parts - especially in Calculus. And always you had to find out on your own. I thought similarly, even at (or especially at) Big Giant Institute: a situation for which there was -simply- No Excuse. Likely they are doing better now.. they couldn't be doing worse.)

Never understood why/how you could 'become' a math teacher, while forgetting (or never experiencing) the very many cultural reasons which afflict people who have grown up within a toxic anti-intellectual Kultur. The Fun, the Beauty of math is subsumed within a mechanically calculated 'achievement ladder' - as if One Size DOES Fit All
(Grade-F material for a so-called statistician: QED right *there*, I wot.)

Finally, whole platoons are Getting It, simultaneously noticing a relationship to visual art interests / corollary to enjoying math "while not breaking a nail" Love. It.


PS- [link|http://www.inventions.org/culture/female/lamarr.html| Hedy Lamarr]

Any girl can be glamorous," Hedy Lamarr once said. "All she has to do is stand still and look stupid.

co-invented spread spectrum techno! -- nobody ever heard about this til after her death.. We've been patronizing females with the most odious of the sheiks, our homegrown barefoot/pregnant redneck mantra -- from the get-go. Lovely to see an Osmium stake driven through the icy heart of that steaming pile: with Ten-9s precision.

[link|http://math.cofc.edu/faculty/kasman/MATHFICT/search.php?orderby=title&go=yes&genre=chi| Thomas Gray: Philosopher Cat] (seen further down this interesting listing.) Some comments by the [link|http://www.siam.org/news/news.php?id=200| author].

Bon appetit

curl grad V=0 and all that Jazz :-0

Simple stories Do Take.. at kid level. Believe I've mentioned several times here, that I learned all I needed to understand about "Why 'ecology' ??" - (all unawares at the initial reading, natch) from a Captain Marvel comic book - a copy of which I'd trade an oscilloscope for, just to see how well I recall the simple plot..

That moment forever trained my eye to Spot the many, many ways in which this society has actually built its entire "capital-ism" shtik upon the necessary inculcation that Growth must be unlimited and that regular Waste must be deified -- so that you will replace things endlessly; so that more $$/time/drudgery shall ... Da Capo "return to beginning."

(I expected US to be bitten on ass much earlier than Now. But we are sooo creative at hiding shit via euphemisms.. maybe it Still doesn't know -??- that that was a Cottonmouth that made those reddening fang marks in the ass.)