The first book I ever wrote was in fourth grade and it was called ‘Billy’s Booger.’ It was an autobiographical piece about a kid who was really bad at math.
The most important thing we can do is inspire young minds and to advance the kind of science, math and technology education that will help youngsters take us to the next phase of space travel.
It was a weird stage of my life, to leave Simon & Garfunkel at the height of our success and become a math teacher. I would talk them through a math problem and ask if anyone had any questions, and they would say, ‘What were the Beatles like?’
I loved theatre and did magic, too, but I was never the best at it – there was never a teacher saying, ‘You’re great, you have to make this your career!’ I was good at science and math. I figured I’d go into science and become a dentist.
I am a Leaper: a person who – thanks to some mathematical errors tied to the cosmic interactions of Earth and Sun and bad math on the part of some old timers long ago – is lost in time, born on a day that simply doesn’t exist three out of four years.
I continued to study Math and Physics on my own, but one and a half years later I realized that I did want to be a composer, and after that I never changed my mind.
It’s fascinating to learn math and science and engineering.
Some people are great at the pure mathematical things – like Bill Gates, he’s great at math things. He loves to do puzzles. Me, I like to look at an overall landscape and try to figure out, how do you solve a problem?
I’d never been a teacher before, and here I was starting my first day with these eager students. There was a shortage of teachers, and they had been without a math teacher for six months. They were so excited to learn math.
I originally went to school for engineering because I loved math and thought I liked science.
I have a really small puppy, Georgie, and one of my favorite things is to take her to the park and play with her. I take two classes at middle school, math and chorus, and I love walking home with her after school.
My freshman year of high school I joined the chess and math clubs.
English was great because I could just write my opinion, and that was good enough. I was terrible in Math, even though I had amazing Math teachers. My favorite subject was either English or History. I had a really awesome high school education.
People who know math understand what other mortals understand, but other mortals do not understand them. This asymmetry gives them a presumption of superior ability.
Math is pretty straightforward.
The math of quantum mechanics and the math of general relativity, when they confront one another, they are ferocious antagonists and the equations don’t work.
In high school, I was selected for NASA’s Math & Science program. I’d hop on the yellow school bus and head up to Cape Canaveral.
A lot of young girls don’t realise how diverse the career opportunities are in games development. Many think that you need elite math skills and a vast knowledge of all things tech to work in games, and haven’t thought about avenues like design, producing, art, writing or composing.
Nothing you’ll read as breaking news will ever hold a candle to the sheer beauty of settled science. Textbook science has carefully phrased explanations for new students, math derived step by step, plenty of experiments as illustration, and test problems.
Not everybody wants be texting their 15-year-old asking how his math tutor was. They would rather be home looking at how the math tutor was today. But it is what it is.
I’m really good at math and history, but I suck in English.
When you take a look at the problems our country is facing, debt is No. 1. The math is downright scary and the credit markets aren’t going to keep on giving us cheap rates.
I think about all of my students who were math-phobic, who didn’t believe they could learn math, who didn’t understand, who didn’t think they were smart enough, and by the end, they understood that they already had the gifts, and my job was to help them access them, and I believe that.
When deciding whether to fund and build a company, we start from basic principles and because many of the businesses and products that our companies create are a complete novelty to us, them and the market, we have to do the math.
We all know that there are these exemplars who can take the toughest students, and they’ll teach them two-and-a-half years of math in a single year.
I was always good at math and science and physics.
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.
Even when a man and a woman perform equally well in a task – say, solving math problems – men are more willing to enter competitions based on that task. Men also show less risk aversion.
I’m tired of being 51st in this country on the NEAP scores on fourth-grade math. We don’t have but 50 states.
Had I to do it again, I would have been a math major, probably a double major, and did take a lot of math classes, but I would have taken a lot more.
In college, you had to worry about that math class or this exam that’s coming up on Tuesday, but not in the professionals. You eat, sleep, and do everything related to your craft – and your craft is football. You can be at it from sunup to sundown.
Most of the time I liked school and got good grades. In junior high, though, I hit a stumbling block with math – I used to come home and cry because of how frustrated I was! But after a few good teachers and a lot of perseverance, I ended up loving math and even choosing it as a major when I got to college.
I obviously pursued a career in the arts but always wondered if I had just been supported a little more in math, as opposed to it being ‘a thing I had to learn,’ how that would have changed things for me.
I did not love reading, spelling, math and science. I struggled. I was a terrible speller.
What’s going on in the game today… it’s data vs. art – that’s what it comes down to for me. Art being the human heartbeat, data being numbers, the math, etc. I believe there’s a balance to be struck right there.
To solve math problems, you need to know the basic mathematics before you can start applying it.
In my own research when I’m working with equations, I never feel like I really understand what I’m doing if I’m solely relying on the mathematics for my understanding. I need to have a visual picture in my mind. I’m constantly translating from the math to some intuitive mind’s-eye picture.
We know that to compete for the jobs of the 21st century and thrive in a global economy, we need a growing, skilled and educated workforce, particularly in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math. Americans with bachelor’s degrees have half the unemployment rate of those with a high school degree.
You know the best thing about competition? There’s this whole strategy game, and when it all works out its like solving that hard math equation. You finally get the answer and you’re so happy.
People often say, ‘I like your comics, even though I don’t know enough math to get all of them,’ as if it’s some kind of club where they don’t belong. But there’s no club. There’s just lots of people who are excited about thinking, learning, joking, and sometimes overanalyzing things.
When you make music, you’re forming these invisible vibrations in the air into different shapes and consistencies and speeds in order to create music, and understanding how the math of that works just gives you more colors to paint with, and allows you to get to what you want quicker.
When I was growing up, I always knew I’d be in the top of my class in math, and that gave me a lot of self-confidence.
If I were to try and find a unifying emotion that kept me calm and focused while I was dancing or writing or solving a math problem, I think the one unifying thing about all those that keeps my interest is creativity.
I’m an electrical engineer. Honestly, I think we have too many lawyers in Washington. Maybe we need some more engineers. They’re trained to solve problems, and we can actually do math, which is a desperately needed skill back there.
I never made a career decision based solely on my desire to be an astronaut. I attended the Naval Academy because I wanted to be a Navy pilot. I majored in math because math had always come pretty easily to me and I liked it.
One day we were sitting in our little classroom in the middle of Australia Zoo, and Dad bursts in and says, ‘OK, today we’re going to go climb a mountain,’ – the Glass House Mountains are about 20 minutes away – so we packed up all our math work and ran out the door and climbed Mount Tibrogargan.
We all studied math, but we don’t go around spewing numbers. Religion should be used in the appropriate way.
My character, Taylor McKessie, is a little bit brighter in the math and science department than I am… okay, a lot.
In middle school, I had the best math teacher I’ve ever had, and he was deaf… and I felt inspired by him. I knew from then on that I wanted to be a math teacher.
I progressed through my schooling, undergraduate and graduate degrees, excited about math and science and engineering, but really didn’t think about being an astronaut at that point. It was kind of unreachable.
