The mathematics of new trails

I like math. I like it a lot. I won’t say I love math, because love should be reciprocated. Love should be returned in kind. Math? Math doesn’t have eyes for me.

I tried, hard, to find a way into math’s heart. You know those children? The ones who want to run fast? Faster than the wind, perhaps? Some of them have bow legs, or two left feet, or one leg shorter than the other. Or they have no feet, no legs at all.

When it comes to math, I am one of those children. I want to run fast, I have the impulse to turn and laugh at the wind at my back, but instead I wobble on crutches as I stare out over the racetrack.

I spent my childhood struggling to be better at math then I was able to be. I was not the sad, sexist-cliche of a girl afraid of math; I enjoyed reading fairly high-level books on mathematics, and some in sciences where those in the profession require math to speak about what...