Laura Laing
″I sucked at math in school. Turns out, all I needed was a super teacher to help me realize that I have a pretty decent math brain,″ says Laura Laing, a freelance journalist and author of Math for Grownups. After four years of teaching math at a Virginia high school in the early ´90s, she realized her need to come out wouldn´t jive in the rural community-so Laing left the school and returned to her first passion, writing. ″Writing is teaching, and in the end, I´m all about turning complex ideas into easy-to-digest stories,″ she tells GO. As a freelancer, Laing wrote school curricula and contributed to national publications like Parade, Parents, Pregnancy and The Advocate before publishing Math for Grownups in 2011. Yes, Laing has a degree in mathematics-but the purpose of her book is to convince readers that they don´t need a degree to understand and appreciate its principles. Contrary to popular belief, there´s no ″math gene.″ To prove it, Laing followed up with Math for Writers, a guide for the group even less attuned to logic than the average adult. Says Laing, ″My main purpose is convincing people that math isn´t all that bad, and that girls have kick-ass math brains.″ -KL
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