Comments on: Winnie Knows Math

Winnie Knows Math

bbrown — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 22:12:06 -0800

Danica McKellar —the former star of The Wonder Years—has her own web site. It's got a great feature where she answers your math questions. No, really. She's got a degree in mathematics and co-authored a paper on percolation and Ashkin-Teller models. No, really.

By: bbrown

bbrown — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 22:18:39 -0800

And, of course, the obligatory link to Josh Saviano's post-Wonder Years activities. {via}

By: bitpart

bitpart — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 22:42:08 -0800

Wow. She was on The West Wing as that guy's brother. I didn't even recognize her. Her face got pudgy. But that's cool. Actually, it's wonderfully fine.

By: naxosaxur

naxosaxur — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 22:48:06 -0800

...this might just be her best week ever.

By: edgeways

edgeways — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 22:59:22 -0800

Wonder what her Erdos number is?

By: keswick

keswick — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 23:00:59 -0800

HAWT.

By: spock

spock — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 23:04:31 -0800

No, really.. . . No, really. Sounds like somebody can't wrap their head around the concept of a female with a degree in math. What's up with that?

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 23:09:42 -0800

Sounds like somebody can't wrap their head around the concept of a female with a degree in math. What's up with that? I think it's more that an actor has a high level of competency with math. It's like finding out Dolph Lundgren has a masters degree in chemical engineering and was awarded a scholarship to MIT.

By: crunchland

crunchland — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 23:10:18 -0800

Barbie: "Math is hard!"

By: amandaudoff

amandaudoff — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 23:15:23 -0800

And, of course, the obligatory link to Josh Saviano's post-Wonder Years activities. Gah! He's gone EVIL! I liked him! (Okay, so pre-pubescent me had a raging crush on him.)

By: Quartermass

Quartermass — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 23:23:35 -0800

Josh Saviano's post-Wonder Years activities Wait a second - I thought Josh Saviano was dead/Marylin Manson?

By: nomad

nomad — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 23:28:11 -0800

The math answers section isn't a real web page though, it's a page test and a .gif

By: jonson

jonson — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 23:31:27 -0800

This news is eight years old, isn't it? I mean, am I just imagining it, or hasn't Danica McKellar had this page up where she answers your math questions for somewhere between six & eight years?

By: davidmsc

davidmsc — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 23:46:18 -0800

And the late-80s rapper Young M.C. holds a degree in Economics from USC, apparently. Smart celebrities -- nice to read about.

By: notmydesk

notmydesk — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 23:54:04 -0800

I think it's more that an actor has a high level of competency with math. It's like finding out Dolph Lundgren has a masters degree in chemical engineering and was awarded a scholarship to MIT. Bad example. He can't act.

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 00:01:00 -0800

Wonder what her Erdos number is? 4. MathSciNet has a "collaboration distance" function in their search engine. And next to the entry field for the second author's name, there's a "Use Erdos" button.

By: mhum

mhum — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 00:55:07 -0800

Wonder what her Erdos number is? As mr_roboto said, it's 4; also, her Bacon number is 2, thus giving her an Erdos-Bacon number of 6. According to this, the only people with lower Erdos-Bacon numbers are Dave Bayer, a math prof who served as a consultant for and had a bit part in A Beautiful Mind, and Brian Greene, a physics prof who served as a consultant for and had a cameo in Frequency. They both have Erdos-Bacon numbers of 5 and (coincidentally) both are at Columbia. To beat these two, Danica will have to either: 1) Co-author a paper with someone with an Erdos number of 1 2) Appear in a movie with Kevin Bacon and co-author a paper with someone with an Erdos number less than or equal to 2 3) Appear in a movie with Kevin Bacon and wait for either Lincoln Chayes or Brandy Winn to co-author a paper with someone with an Erdos number of 1 Of course, if we count only substantive acting roles for the calculation of Bacon numbers, Winnie Cooper already has 'em beat. In fact, by that standard, she might be the only one with a finite Erdos-Bacon number.

By: Space Coyote

Space Coyote — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 00:58:58 -0800

That makes her one of the few people who have finite Erdos and Bacon numbers. The Oracle says: Danica McKellar has a Bacon number of 2. Danica McKellar was in Raising Genius (2004) with Clint Howard Clint Howard was in My Dog Skip (2000) with Kevin Bacon Funny you'd think instead of making up stories about Paul being Marilyn Manson all those family values groups could point to the real example of Winnie to guide young minds.

By: Space Coyote

Space Coyote — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 00:59:39 -0800

Curses, foiled again.

By: fixedgear

fixedgear — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 01:42:57 -0800

Little Winnie Cooper? That is cool, even if it is old news. This blew my mind when I saw him being interviewed on CNN a while back, though.

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 03:53:57 -0800

Funny you'd think instead of making up stories about Paul being Marilyn Manson Quartermass didn't make that up. It's a popular urban legend.

By: Saucy Intruder

Saucy Intruder — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 06:29:57 -0800

I thought Rob Stone from Mr. Belvedere was supposed to be Marylin Manson?

By: ltracey

ltracey — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 07:46:22 -0800

I went to high school with Young MC. We attended Hunter College High school in NYC, which is no slouch when it comes to the smarts (don't ask me how I got in there.)

By: mkultra

mkultra — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 08:16:21 -0800

Dolph Lundgren has a masters degree in chemical engineering and was awarded a scholarship to MIT. Not just any scholarship- he was a Fulbright Scholar, which is pretty hardcore. My mind's pretty blown. I'm amazed this hasn't been posted before.

By: Optimus Chyme

Optimus Chyme — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 08:59:15 -0800

This is, hands-down, the absolute best thread on the blue I have ever seen, and I weep at its beauty. Bacon-Erdos numbers? Oh man.

By: delfuego

delfuego — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 09:17:05 -0800

Hah! That explains her role on NCIS two weeks ago, when she played a computational scientist for the federal government. She must have had fun actually getting to play a role that encompassed her academic skill. She even got a little love thing going with one of the NCIS guys, until she was killed.

By: scottreynen

scottreynen — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 09:34:31 -0800

considering that both erdos and bacon numbers measure distance, wouldn't the proper formulation of the erdos-bacon number be the square root of the sum of the squares, rather than the sum of the two numbers? that would make it ((2^2)+(4^2))^(1/2) = 4.47213595 i suppose i should be asking danica about this.

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 09:45:30 -0800

This blew my mind when I saw him being interviewed on CNN a while back, though. posted by fixedgear at 1:42 AM PST on February 2 Good Lord. "To most of the world, Skunk Baxter is one of the great rock and roll guitar players. Inside the Beltway, he's one of the leading experts on military defense, and we listen to his advice all the time," said Republican California congressman Dana Rohrabacher. "He knows all about weapons technology and has a better understanding of the strategic game going on than I do, and I'm on the International Relations Committe." I'm speechless. Steely Dan will never be the same. Uh.... then there's David Duchovny, who dropped out of his PhD program at Yale (English) to pursue modelling and acting.

By: availablelight

availablelight — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 09:54:36 -0800

That girl who played Blossom went on to be a neuroscientist, the last I heard.

By: Wet Spot

Wet Spot — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 09:59:24 -0800

Too bad she wasn't featured in Bikini Calculus.

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 10:50:30 -0800

wouldn't the proper formulation of the erdos-bacon number be the square root of the sum of the squares, rather than the sum of the two numbers? Only if the axes are orthogonal, ya big silly. If Bacon and Erdos numbers are correlated, they wouldn't be. 6 using the city-block metric should be a nice worst-case. We don't know what Danica's true Erdobacon number is, because we don't know what the correlation between Bacon and Erdos numbers is, but we can be sure it's no higher than 6.

By: weston

weston — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 10:57:51 -0800

considering that both erdos and bacon numbers measure distance, wouldn't the proper formulation of the erdos-bacon number be the square root of the sum of the squares, rather than the sum of the two numbers? Well... the euclidean distance norm isn't the only possible one out there. Just adding individual distances is a perfectly useful norm, under many circumstances.

By: weston

weston — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 10:59:55 -0800

Um. On not having previewed, what ROU_Xenophobe said.

By: mdn

mdn — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 11:11:49 -0800

Only if the axes are orthogonal, ya big silly. I love this place.

By: dejah420

dejah420 — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 11:29:53 -0800

This blew my mind when I saw him being interviewed on CNN a while back, though. Ok, yeah...one of the Doobie Brothers working on missile defense systems is a bit brain-tweaking... :) Winnie getting a math degree? It's almost type-casting, isn't it? ;)

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 11:54:06 -0800

Someone should post the "So if your Erdos number is 4 and your Bacon number is 2, what's your Erdobacon number given that the two might be correlated, or might not?" question to her web page and see what she says. After all, she probably has the most insight into whether or not they're correlated, and into how the two should be weighted.

By: graventy

graventy — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 13:11:50 -0800

I thought the MetaRPG thread was bad, but this...this may take the cake.

By: ScaryShrink

ScaryShrink — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 20:55:19 -0800

Skunk Baxter's a republican????

By: dirigibleman

dirigibleman — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 22:33:24 -0800

So, now she's even further out of my league.

By: fixedgear

fixedgear — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 09:13:22 -0800

Skunk Baxter's a republican???? I'm not sure what his political affiliation is, if any.

By: billsaysthis

billsaysthis — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 11:32:42 -0800

Skunk Baxter's a republican???? He's just takin' it to the street. The street being Pennsylvania Ave.

By: krunk

krunk — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 14:45:50 -0800

I'm more shocked by the fact that Ashton Kutcher majored in biochemical engineering at the University of Iowa.

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 10:47:20 -0800

Dexter Holland, lead singer/guitarist for The Offspring, has a Ph.D. in molecular biology.

By: Jupiter Jones

Jupiter Jones — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 12:52:44 -0800

The co-founder / frontman of the punk band Bad Religion, Greg Graffin, has a Master's degree in Geology and a Ph.D. in Evolutionary Biology. According to the IMDB, he is "Said to be one of the five leading bone tissue paleontologists in the world." Pretty impressive.