Believe it or not, lots of people change their majors and abandon their dreams just to avoid a couple of math classes in college.

I didn't think that college math was for me. I didn't think I'd be able to hack it. And that perception of math not being for girls, not being for girls who see themselves as socially well adjusted has got to change.

I thought, well, you might see curves there, but that's just a bone - so even if I lose weight that's not going to change anything. That's how I look. That's my shape. Do the math.

I recognize that I have a unique position to be a role model to young girls because I am doing something that they consider glamorous, which is acting, and yet I took a time to really get my education and study mathematics, and I think math is the cat's meow.

I had done quite a bit of research about math education when I spoke before Congress in 2000 about the importance of women in mathematics. The session of Congress was all about raising more scholarships for girls in college. I told them I felt that it's too late by college.

I think of it as a good opportunity to let, in particular, school kids know that this job and other interesting jobs in science and engineering are open to anyone who works hard in school and gets a good education and studies math and science. And that it's not just for a select group of people.

I tell students that even if they don't like math right now, they can use math as a brain-sharpening tool - a tool that not only builds the foundation for a great career, but that also builds self-confidence, no matter what they choose to do with their lives.

I never did very well in math - I could never seem to persuade the teacher that I hadn't meant my answers literally.

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I'm a visual thinker, really bad at algebra. There's others that are a pattern thinker. These are the music and math minds. They think in patterns instead of pictures. Then there's another type that's not a visual thinker at all, and they're the ones that memorize all of the sports statistics, all of the weather statistics.

Find your self-respect now. Don't dumb yourselves down. Think of yourself as capable and worthy of finding a guy who is going to respect you, too. It's so important, I mean, and the confidence you get from feeling smart and tackling something like mathematics, which is a challenge, right? Math is hard.

I liked math - that was my favorite subject - and I was very interested in astronomy and in physical science.

I didn't mind studying. Obviously math and the physical science subjects interested me more than some of the more artistic subjects, but I think I was a pretty good student.

I was always good at math and science, and I never realized that that was unusual or somehow undesirable.

American high school students trail teenagers from 14 European and Asian countries in reading, math and science. We're even trailing France.

Brian and I were both science students. You know science sort of math and physics side, you know.

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.

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.