Posted on 07/22/2005 12:02:04 PM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Actually, I have noticed that people who advance themselves extensively in mathematics prefer neat work over neat appearance.
After seeing her picture, I was suddenly overcome with thoughts of "piece-wise" continuity.
(laugh) And I guess we should eschew talk of a ring of prime characteristic.
Let's just say I'd really like to play a one-on-one game of "hide the eigen-vector" with her....
Just because I like to kick little nerds asses, I am not lumped in the perv category with you, pally.
Yep, math major.
It's pretty disappointing how all the kids on that show turned out so well. It must be Ben Stein's fault.
She could apply my tagline... :)
That settles it. I want to see her with Lisa Randall in special "Women of Science" issue of Playboy.
For some strange reason, that picture makes me think of.............multiplying.............
Indeed!
I guess you missed that part.
By the way, what mathematical theorems have YOU proved lately?
Maybe hundreds, but I'm not a celebrity, so you'll never know, will you?
Or maybe you're just mad that I goofed on your fantasy girl, hoping she might read this and become your friend.
You sound like someone with psychological problems.
You sound like someone with a really good sense of humor.
I'm sure Winnie will go for that.
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