Quartz – Allison Schrager
“My math career had an inauspicious start. In elementary school, I was removed from the class at math time, so I didn’t “slow everyone else down.” My third grade teacher told my mother there was no need to worry about my bad math scores because math just wasn’t my thing. This started a long, tortured relationship with mathematics. My academic record in mathematics was unremarkable, inconsistent, and mostly below-average before ending early in high school. It wasn’t until I found myself in a quantitive PhD program that I resumed a frantic, informal math education. I completed the PhD focused on pension economics that featured a very difficult math problem and now earn an income solving hard math. But I still don’t consider myself a “math person.” I believe that I was lucky. I loved economics so much I willed myself to become “math person” because it was necessary. Learning lots of math turned out to be a gift that makes me employable. But my early experience was not uncommon and, sadly, probably robs many women of thousands of dollars in earnings.”(more)