Between Series, an Actress Became a Superstar (in Math)

The New York Times (via National Review's The Corner) ^ | 07/19/2005 | Kenneth Chang

[GreenLanternCorps]

On her Web site, Danica McKellar, the actress best known as Winnie Cooper on the television series "The Wonder Years," takes on questions that require more than a moment's thought to answer.

"If it takes Sam six minutes to wash a car by himself," one fan asked recently, "and it takes Brian eight minutes to wash a car by himself, how long will it take them to wash a car together?"

"This is a 'rates' problem," Ms. McKellar wrote in reply. "The key is to think about each of their 'car washing rates' and not the 'time' it takes them."

Ms. McKellar, now a semiregular on "The West Wing" playing a White House speechwriter, Elsie Snuffin, is probably the only person on prime-time television who moonlights as a cyberspace math tutor.

Her mathematics knowledge extends well beyond calculus. As a math major at the University of California, Los Angeles, she also took more esoteric classes, the ones with names like "complex analysis" and "real analysis," and she pondered making a career move to professional mathematician.

"I love that stuff," Ms. McKellar said last month during a visit to Manhattan after a play-reading in the Hamptons. Her conversation was peppered with terminology like "epsilons" and "limsups" (pronounced "lim soups").

"I love continuous functions and proving if functions are continuous or not," she said.

She may also be the only actress, now or ever, to prove a new mathematical theorem, one that bears her name. Certainly, she is the only theorem prover who appears wearing black lingerie in the July issue of Stuff magazine. Even in that interview, she mentioned math.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Got to kissing, I think.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Depends whether Sue shows up to distract Sam and Brian.

Add more if Jane is wearing a 2 piece swimming suit.

Even more if its a cut off: Ratio of time to clothes is inversely proportional to the wetness of the clothes.

[Skip Ripley]

I'd hit it, grab a sammich and hit it again...

[antiRepublicrat]

I have not a clue what kind of job she will get with that type of degree

I knew a math PhD who got a job high in a large bioinformatics company based on that degree.

[Gabz]

Has anyone told you recently that you are a LOON?????????????

If not, consider yourself told.

[Robert A Cook PE]

My daughter Jean, freeper tealcandtrip, graduated at 19 from Southern Tech with a BS in math and in physics: She did some similar things by dual-enrolling in HS at the college: so she finished "high school" after three years as a college sophomore with some 50-odd college credits already on her transcript.

Keep encouraging her: the regular HS courses are dull and boring to many (all ?) above-average achievers. AP classes, college classes, etc all give a willing student a real leg up. Sure, the individual has to be willing to work harder than the average HS student, but that's possible.

[savedbygrace]

You got it.

Even if you play the stated problem straight, you can't reach a conclusion with the factors given.

It will depend on the method they use to wash the car. For example, when I used to wash my car, I had a system that would reduce the overall time and effort - I'd use the hose in one hand and a sponge in the other. No soap.

If both boys used this method, they'd need two hoses, and the hoses would need to be from two different houses, because if they both were using water from the same house, the flow would be reduced to each hose, increasing their rate of washing.

[Hildy]

Is there anything you people won't find fault with? It was a QUESTION ASKED BY A STUDENT. She's a math TUTOR. I know you're all supergeniuses...that's why you spend all day on the computer mocking those who are actually doing things. Yikes.

[Starter]

Actually, according to my Chemistry instructor, the answer would be 1. You've only got 1 significant figure there to work with, so you can't get any more accurate than that.

[Hildy]

That's because it was a question ASKED by a grade school student.

[Moral Hazard]

I was just saying the question wasn't difficult. That was a criticism of the article, which made it sound like it was a question only a math major could answer. It was not a criticism of the the tutor or the student.

[Netheron]

I'm surprised that there's > 130 posts on her, and no-one has mentioned Hedy Lamarr, queen of the Electrical Engineers and inventor of frequency scrambling?

[JakeSladder]

Wonder if "Skunk" is thinking of missile defense systems when playing guitar, and thinking of playing guitar when doing missile defense sytems.. hehe..

[FYREDEUS]

A beautiful mind can only make a pretty girl even more attractive :-).

[snarks_when_bored]

"I love continuous functions and proving if functions are continuous or not," she said.

I was always partial to the continuous, nowhere-differentiable functions myself—they're infinitely kinky.

[Starter]

That's Hedley.

[Tanniker Smith]

Why didn't I take up photography in high school?

oh, yeah, I was studying math. sigh

TS
Actually, in college there was this one girl (sorry, young woman) named Ellanora who I actually managed to exchange numbers with. She called me once -- with a math problem for the test the following day. She didn't go out. She just studied.

TS

[Fledermaus]

She sure adds up in my book!

[longshadow]

I was always partial to the continuous, nowhere-differentiable functions myself—they're infinitely kinky.

After seeing her picture, I was suddenly overcome with thoughts of piece-wise" continuity.

[Tanniker Smith]

I have to find the old theorem that I helped write way back in the day. Basically, the last line was that

the integral of e to the x (you have to write that out mathematically) = f(u)^n