Math Autobiography

So what do you do? How do you usually introduce yourself to people?

So I do Math. My area is called Topology. The types of typology that I do is called Homotopy theory. I study high dimensional shapes. A homotopy type is a whole collection of spaces that are all equivalent to each other.

How did you decide that you want to do math?

I didn't always know. And in fact, I distinctly remember in grade school being in remedial math class because I was a lot slower at Arithmetic then the other class--

Really?

Yeah, I was like really not good at it. And in college, I took a Calculus class that sort of changed everything that I thought about math. I found out that the more math classes I took, I became more interested in math and I became less interested in physics. Somebody told me that there was such a thing as Graduate School. I like doing Math. Maybe I should keep doing Math.Somebody told me that you can just keep on doing Math [laughter]. So that's what I'm doing--

Just keep going [laughter].

Yeah.

That's cool.

I think it's very creative, and I like that it has a bit more

In particular, in Mathematics, things that somehow capture different ideas, sort of wide-ranging ideas, in a relatively concise way. So, Euler's formula that connects the complex exponential with the Trig function. I think it's fair to say that, that is objectively beautiful. It connects different ideas. My favourite example of this is actually Place Value Arithmetic. There's a theory there about representing numbers in base 10. And that theory is important to know, but I don't think that theory is the mathematics. And then there's a procedure, say for the way you multiply, and that's not the mathematics either. Then there's the explanation for why that procedure works. Kind of seeing that connection, that's the mathematics. Now, of course, you can't know the mathematics without knowing both of those