Math Girl
Sum-thing wonderful!
When I was in grade school, my father took me to the NY Hilton (wearing my chubby-girl finery and my oh-so-fashionable spectacles) to give a demo of New Math to a room full of educators, administrators, and an assortment of 1960s mathletes. I was one of several kids selected by my teacher -- and one of the only girls at the chalkboard. (Remember, there was only chalk back then...no computers or Proxima projectors.)
It was an era when being a "math girl" was decidedly uncool, and I seemed to lose some of my quantitative super-powers in high school, becoming totally unfocused and discombobulated by Calculus. (Cones spinning around points on a graph? Why would they do that?)
My daughters are both math girls, but I am often shocked by the number of women in business who can't navigate an Excel spreadsheet, develop an estimate, or read a P&L (or even think it stands for Pocketbook & Lipstick).
As we all struggle through a recession, I urge business folk -- women AND men -- to befriend their budgets and caress their calculators (or numerical keypads). I spent an hour on the beach last weekend reviewing my business forecast for the rest of 2008 and playing with "what-if" scenarios (a neat trick I learned during my years in banking -- the mecca for all math boys and girls). I can still calculate by hand and, although I much prefer words to numbers, I know that it's the latter that ultimately spells business success.
My eye-wear and attire are much more fashionable now and I now longer perform math feats in front of hotel audiences. But I guess I will always be a bit of a math girl -- and proud of it!
Girls and math: Math Doesn't Suck
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