If you thought Winnie Cooper was cool in The Wonder Years (1988-1993), just look at her now. Danica McKellar is a bona fide math whiz, and she’s written best-selling math books for girls.
After her run as Kevin Arnold’s love-interest/buddy on the classic 80s sitcom The Wonder Years, McKellar went to UCLA. She explains on her website (www.danicamckellar.com) that she was afraid of math, but took some classes to challenge herself. It’s a good thing she was willing to take that challenge, because she loved math so much that she ended up graduating summa cum laude with a degree in Mathematics from UCLA. And impressively, she co-authored a mathematical physics theorem, known as the Chayes-McKellar-Winn Theorem. McKellar was driven by her discovery that she was good at math after all. She used this breakthrough as a basis for a book for 9-12-year-old girls, called Math Doesn’t Suck: How to survive middle school math without losing your mind or breaking a nail. It was published in 2007 and became a New York Times Bestseller. She followed it up with 2008’s Kiss My Math: Showing pre-algebra who’s boss, for girls 13-15, which also spent time on the bestseller list, and in August of 2010 she released Hot X: algebra exposed! for girls 16-18.