Math For Kids Quotes & Sayings

I think we need more math majors who don't become mathematicians. More math major doctors, more math major high school teachers, more math major CEOs, more math major senators. But we won't get there unless we dump the stereotype that math is only worthwhile for kid geniuses. — Jordan Ellenberg

Rigor mattered. Koreans understood that mastering difficult academic content was important. They didn't take shortcuts, especially in math. They assumed that performance was mostly a product of hard work - not God-given talent. This attitude meant that all kids tried harder, and it was more valuable to a country than gold or oil. — Amanda Ripley

When I cook with my son, I might chop vegetables and have fun with different shapes. Cooking is a way to teach kids about other things, like reading or math with all of the weights and measures. There are so many things that are part of cooking that are also very educational. — Emeril Lagasse

In art class at school we learned how to draw tanks and soldiers opening fire at [Iranian leader Ayatollah] Khomeini and his beard. They didn't teach us the names of the flowers that grew around us in the city - wild flowers of all kinds and all colors. The math teacher used to whip the kids with his trouser belt. My father was constantly violent toward my mother for the most trivial reasons. — Hassan Blasim

I knew comedy was the thing for me when I was the only Asian kid in high school ... who failed math. — Dat Phan

Music rhythms are mathematical patterns. When you hear a song and your body starts moving with it, your body is doing math. The kids in their parents' garage practicing to be a band may not realize it, but they're also practicing math. — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Here's an uplifting story. Congratulations to the Little League team from Huntington Beach, California. Yeah, they beat Japan to win the Little League World Series. That's pretty good. See, that proves that when math and science aren't involved, our kids can beat anybody. — Jay Leno

So, if I'm no cheerleader of sports, why write a chapter about it? Sports do have some positive impact on society. They solve problems, such as how to get inner-city kids to spend $175 on shoes. They serve as a backdrop for some of our most memorable commercials. And they remain the one and only relevant application of math. Not only that, but we have sports to thank for most of the last century's advances in manliness. The system starts in school, where gym class separates the men from the boys. Then those men are taught to be winners, or at least, losers that hate themselves. — Stephen Colbert

You know there's always that kid in your class - and every class has one - the kid who draws all the time and is really good? That was not me. I was a lousy draftsman. But as soon as I figured out that I could make things come alive, like using the corners of my math book to make flipbooks, I was hooked. — Pete Docter

I was always good at math, but I was good at everything. It sounds obnoxious, but I was just smart. In school, it's kind of obvious when you're learning things faster than other kids. — Lisa Randall

All over China, parents tell their children to stop complaining and to finish their quadratic equations and trigonometric functions because there are sixty-five million American kids going to bed with no math at all. — Michael Cunningham

I have been teaching my own kids math Full-Contact for years. I know from personal experience that 10 minutes of math time with me and my undivided attention is far more productive for my kids than an hour spent doing exercises off on their own. I firmly believe in the idea of '"less time, more connection" as an effective way to teach math. — Robin Padron

The New York Times - but the whole country gives it that weight. It's like the Asian kid in math class. Everybody in the media cheats off The New York Times. — Bill Maher

When I went to Afghanistan in 2003, I walked into a war zone. Entire neighborhoods had been demolished. There were an overwhelming number of widows and orphans and people who had been physically and emotionally damaged; every 10-year-old kid on the street knew how to dismantle a Kalashnikov in under a minute. I would flip through math textbooks intended for third grade, fourth grade, and they would include word problems such as, "If you have 100 grenades and 20 mujahideen, how many grenades per mujahideen do you get?" War has infiltrated every facet of life. — Khaled Hosseini

My kids used to love math. Now it makes them cry. Thanks standardized testing and common core! — Louis C.K.

I'm just like any other regular mum; cooking, cleaning, wiping butts, picking up after kids, being a wife and helping the kids with their homework. Mind you, I'm terrible at maths. I can't even do my six-year-old's maths homework with her. — Gwyneth Paltrow

It only takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and math skills well enough that kids can be self-teachers from then on. The cry for 'basic skills' practice is a smokescreen behind which schools pre-empt the time of children for twelve years and teach them the six lessons I've just taught you. — John Taylor Gatto

In most countries, attending some kind of early childhood program (i.e., preschool or prekindergarten) led to real and lasting benefits. On average, kids who did so for more than a year scored much higher in math by age fifteen (more than a year ahead of other students). But in the United States, kids' economic backgrounds overwhelmed this advantage. The quality of the early childhood program seemed to matter more than the quantity. — Amanda Ripley

I'm always involved with the Aerospace Program and NASA and Goddard Space Flight Center. And if kids feel so inclined, they can log onto NASA and the Optimus Prime Spinoff Award, which we present every year to some of the brilliant young minds that are taking up into the academics of space, science, technology, math. — Peter Cullen

Tom was not good at math. He'd started to lose his way in middle school, as so many American kids did. It had happened gradually; first he hadn't understood one lesson, and then another and another. — Amanda Ripley

The ultimate act of cowardice is the fat-headed wrestling guy sitting behind the frail kid in math class, clipping him on the ear, saying: 'What are you going to do about that, faggot?' That is cowardice. When the bullets start flying past that jock's saucer-shaped ears, that's not cowardice. That's payback. — Doug Stanhope

Take a random group of 8-year-old American and Japanese kids, give them all a really, really hard math problem, and start a stopwatch. The American kids will give up after 30, 40 seconds. If you let the test run for 15 minutes, the Japanese kids will not have given up. You have to take it away. — Malcolm Gladwell

I started studying law, but this I could stand just for one semester. I couldn't stand more. Then I studied languages and literature for two years. After two years I passed an examination with the result I have a teaching certificate for Latin and Hungarian for the lower classes of the gymnasium, for kids from 10 to 14. I never made use of this teaching certificate. And then I came to philosophy, physics, and mathematics. In fact, I came to mathematics indirectly. I was really more interested in physics and philosophy and thought about those. It is a little shortened but not quite wrong to say: I thought I am not good enough for physics and I am too good for philosophy. Mathematics is in between. — George Polya

You know when you're a kid and you think, 'Oh no, I've got double math, this is never gonna end,' but then it ends, and it's like it never happened? That's like life. — Craig Ferguson

Music is such an incredible tool for kids in general. They learn discipline; they learn how to express themselves. You learn math. You learn language. It's the ideal teaching tool, and that's why it's mind-boggling when any school superintendent decides that music is something we can kind of do without. — Joshua Bell

I've taught statistics, math courses and what I've found is that often if you teach them algebraically the formulas, you'll have one group of kids doing well. — Robert Sternberg

Why were American kids consistently underestimated in math? In middle school, Kim and Tom had both decided that math was something you were either good at, or you weren't, and they weren't. Interestingly, that was not the kind of thing that most Americans said about reading. If you weren't good at reading, you could, most people assumed, get better through hard work and good teaching. But in the United States, math was, for some reason, considered more of an innate ability, like being double-jointed. — Amanda Ripley

If I do have kids, I can't wait because I'm excited to go back to school to help them with their homework and remember how to do simple math. I think it's about staying curious and not losing the sense of wonder. — Mamie Gummer

That assumption - that labeling and sorting children based on gender doesn't really matter as long as everyone is treated fairly - would hold true if children only paid attention to the more overt, obvious messages we adults send. If children only listened to our purposeful messages, parenting would be easy. Most (but not all) parents and teachers take great effort in treating their children fairly, regardless of gender. Parents don't need to say to their daughters, "You probably won't enjoy math" or say to their sons, "Real boys don't play with dolls." Most parents wouldn't dream of saying these blatant stereotypes to their kids. But research has shown that when we label (and sort and color-code) by gender, children do notice. And it matters - children are learning whether you mean to be teaching them or not. — Christia Spears Brown

In Korea, math moved fluidly. When the teacher asked questions, the kids answered as if math were a language that they knew by heart. As in Tom's class in Poland, calculators weren't allowed, so kids had learned mental tricks to manipulate numbers quickly. — Amanda Ripley

Kids deserve arts, and it's just as important as science, math, history, English or athletics. — Flea

Some kids are good at math, some kids can run, and acting was an interest of mine. Because I knew you could do it for a living I decided, that's what I'm going to do. — Jonny Lee Miller

It is this breathtaking image [of] success that motivates us and motivates kids to follow and understand rocket science: to understand the importance of physics and math and, in many ways, to have that awe at exploration of the frontiers of the unknown. — Steve Jurvetson

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. — Ellen Ochoa

Homework's hard. Especially math. My kids joke with me. They tell me they have homework. I say, 'Okay.' And then I sit down and they say, 'It's math.' 'No! Not math! English, history, anything!' — Angelina Jolie

I certainly was a geeky kid myself, but to me, math and science were always these magical things- powerful tools you could use in incredible ways. — Ben Mezrich

Most children, even very bright ones, need constant review and practice to truly own a concept in grammar, math or science. In schools today, on paper it may appear that kids are learning skills, but in reality they are only renting them, soon to forget what they've learned over the weekend or summer vacation. — Rafe Esquith

Speaking of human computers, there is a guy named Art Benjamin, he's a human calculator. He says it's a skill he learned as a kid. Now he's a math professor at Harvey Mudd. He can find the square root of a six digit number in a few seconds. Practice. — Bill Nye

Especially girls, but any kids exposed to music programs and arts programs do much better on their tests. They have a better chance of going to college. They can focus better. You know, we're not just automatons learning how to work machines and do engineering and math and science. All of that's great, but you've got to build a whole person. — Bonnie Raitt

Kids praised for effort complete 50 percent more hard math problems than kids praised for intelligence. — John Medina

In any case, do you really think kids even want something that is relevant to their daily lives? You think something practical like compound interest is going to get them excited? People enjoy fantasy, and that is just what mathematics can provide
a relief from daily life, an anodyne to the practical workaday world. — Paul Lockhart

We had the schools we wanted, in a way. Parents did not tend to show up at schools demanding that their kids be assigned more challenging reading or that their kindergarteners learn math while they still loved numbers. They did show up to complain about bad grades, however. And they came in droves, with video cameras and lawn chairs and full hearts, to watch their children play sports. — Amanda Ripley

Why did math matter so much? Some reasons were practical: More and more jobs required familiarity with probability, statistics, and geometry. The other reason was that math was not just math. Math is a language of logic. It is a disciplined, organized way of thinking. There is a right answer; there are rules that must be followed. More than any other subject, math is rigor distilled. Mastering the language of logic helps to embed higher-order habits in kids' minds: the ability to reason, for example, to detect patterns and to make informed guesses. Those kinds of skills had rising value in a — Amanda Ripley

People are more easily manipulated when they don't have information. If you ensure that kids grow up without basic reading skills, math skills, and so forth, then you ensure that they can't act effectively. — Tony Kushner

The schools I went to as a kid made me wary. It was clear to me that everything was a lie except math. — Suzan Shown Harjo

MasterChef Junior for me was about working closely with these kids and getting them to reeducate their parents to understand that food is as important educationally as Math and English and it's important that we don't take it for granted. — Gordon Ramsay

We're constantly judging and grading other parents, just to make sure that they aren't any better than us. I'm as guilty as anyone. I see some lady hand her kid a Nintendo DS at the supermarket and I instantly downgrade that lady to Shitty Parent status. I feel pressure to live up to a parental ideal that no one probably has ever achieved. I feel pressure to raise a group of human beings that will help America kick the shit out of Finland and South Korea in the world math rankings. I feel pressure to shield my kids from the trillion pages of hentai donkey porn out there on the Internet. I feel pressure to make the insane amounts of money needed for a supposedly 'middle-class' upbringing for the kids, an upbringing that includes a house and college tuition and health care and so many other expenses that you have to be a multimillionaire to afford it. PRESSURE PRESSURE PRESSURE. — Drew Magary

My basic philosophy of teaching was straightforward and deeply personal. I wanted to teach the way I wished that I myself had been taught. Which is to say, I hoped to convey the sheer joy of learning, the thrill of understanding things about the universe. I wanted to pass along to students not only the logic but the beauty of math and science. Furthermore, I wanted to do this in a way that would be equally helpful to kids studying a subject for the first time and for adults who wanted to refresh their knowledge; for students grappling with homework and for older people hoping to keep their minds active and supple. — Salman Khan

When my kids were growing up, I wanted their teachers to teach them science, reading, math and history. I also wanted them to care about my kids. But I did not want my children's public school teachers teaching them religion. That was my job as a parent and the job of our church, Sunday school, and youth group. — Adam Hamilton

The No Child Left Behind Program was an incentive to the schools to get their kids up to snuff on math and science and reading. — Sandra Day O'Connor

When I was in high school, I was in a special math class. I was infatuated with physics, particularly nuclear physics, Einstein, and the Big Bang. I read a lot about black holes. And partly because I'm so lazy I thought you could do all this just by looking at the sky and thinking up universes. It didn't seem like hard work when I was a kid, so I enrolled in this class. — Aleksandar Hemon

Other kids could read, other kids could write, other kids could spell, they could do math. I felt like an alien. I felt like an outcast. I felt like, 'What is going to happen to me?' — R. Kelly

I was very disruptive. I was horrible. I didn't learn like all the other kids. I had to sometimes take my tests out in the hallways because I couldn't focus. But, my teachers would come see me in the plays and were like 'I don't understand how you can focus and be in the moment in a play and you go into math class and you can't focus.' — Eliza Coupe

We believed we could prepare our kids for a more competitive world. And today, our younger students have earned the highest math and reading scores on record. Our high school graduation rate has hit an all-time high. And more Americans finish college than ever before. — Barack Obama

Everybody has fucked-up families, even normal kids, even the ones who aren't in here. There's no magic math equation that makes us addicts, nothing that separates us from everyone else. — Amy Reed

So many people think that social studies and weird lessons in social studies, teaching kids in America are bad, is it the result of Common Core? And it's not. It's not. Common Core does not deal with social studies. It's basically writing and math. — Megyn Kelly

Willpower is a learnable skill, something that can be taught the same way kids learn to do math and say thank you. — Charles Duhigg

So let that be a lesson, kids who get an F in math. Ellen says you're doing the right thing. You're welcome, parents. — Ellen DeGeneres

Building Oracle is like doing math puzzles as a kid. — Larry Ellison