Interestingly BoingBoing put this up today: ---
The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdős<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1596433078/downandoutint-20>is a beautifully written, beautifully illustrated kids' biography of Paul Erdős, the fantastically prolific itinerant mathematician who published more papers than any other mathematician in history. *Boy* is written by Deborah Heiligman, with illustrations by LeUyen Pham, and the pair really worked to weave numbers and mathematics through the text, with lively, fun illustrations of a young Erdős learning about negative numbers, becoming obsessed with prime numbers and leading his high-school chums on a mathematical tour of Budapest. They also go to great lengths to capture the upside and downside of Erdős's legendary eccentricity -- his inability to fend for himself and his helplessness when it came to everyday tasks like cooking and doing laundry; his amazing generosity and brilliance and empathy in his working and personal life. Ultimately, this is a book that celebrates the idea of following your weird, wooing the muse of the odd, and playing to your strengths rather than agonizing over your weaknesses. It's an inspiring and sweet tale of one of humanity's greatest mathematicians, and a parable about the magic of passion and obsession. My daughter, who is five, demanded that I read it to her three times in a row, over three bedtimes, which is always a vote of confidence. --- from: http://boingboing.net/2013/06/25/the-boy-who-loved-math-th.html On 26 June 2013 08:44, Charles Haynes <[email protected]> wrote: > at least in the USA it's clear that girls are steered away from STEM > curricula by a variety of mechansims, primarily social. Girls aren't > "supposed" to like Maths, and so they don't. Girls that show an interest or > aptitude are subtly or not so subtly told that this is inappropriate, that > they're weird, that they will be unpopular, and so on. > > In fact until they're told they should be bad at it, girls generally show > higher aptitude for maths than boys of comparable age. > > -- Charles >
