Winnie on Wonder Years is Math-mazing!!

I always thought Elsie on The West Wing looked familiar. I didn't realize she was Winnie from Wonder Years! Apparently she also got her BS in mathematics and has been published. Check out her web page for details.

I learned about all of this in a recent NYTimes article.

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.

[ ahem... I think the NYTimes author meant to put a space between lim and sups, but it doesn't really matter... I also have a problem with the author sayiing that analysis extends beyond Calculus... That's sorta like saying the NBA extends well beyond basketball... ]

So I think that's really friggin' cute!

And a fun little comment that hits close to home...

Ms. McKellar had toyed with the idea of going to graduate school. "She certainly had the capability and talent to do that," Professor Chayes said.

But by then, she had decided to return to acting. The academic world, she said, was too isolating and lonely.