Fun with Math Leads to Chat with Professor, Change in Major
Posted on August 31, 2022 by Dept of Math/Stats
For Sam Formichella, coming to South was no surprise. Majoring in mathematics and statistics was.
The University of South 青涩直播鈥檚 proximity to his hometown of Fairhope, 青涩直播, and his mother鈥檚 job in the South鈥檚 Office of Academic Assessment made his higher education choice easy. As for a major, he started in electrical engineering, then switched to physics.
One day, he contacted Dr. Armin Straub, an associate math professor, for help with a factoring problem involving primes and factorials. He was trying to solve it for fun. 鈥淧rior to this, I had no knowledge of math other than as a tool to solve other problems,鈥� Formichella said.
After that chat, 鈥淚 began to understand that there鈥檚 all kinds of crazy stuff going on in math, and it鈥檚 just a load of fun.鈥�
He began meeting regularly with Dr. Straub. He received a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) that resulted in his publishing a paper with the professor, 鈥淕aussian Binomial Coefficients with Negative Arguments,鈥� in Annals of Combinatorics. And he changed his major to math.
鈥淚n the undergraduate math degree, you get a solid foundation with algebra, analysis 鈥� which is just a fancy word for calculus 鈥� and number theory,鈥� Formichella said. Number theory was his favorite. 鈥淲e鈥檝e been using these whole numbers for thousands of years, and we鈥檙e still finding out things about them. How is that even possible?鈥�
After graduating, he moved to the Portland, Oregon, area and trained in software development. At some point, he鈥檇 like to further explore math in graduate school. In the meantime, he contents himself with textbooks and practice problems.
鈥淔or the near future,鈥� he said, 鈥淚鈥檓 going to stick with programming. It鈥檚 a really fun and concrete way of using math, but it鈥檚 abstract enough to present similar problems. I鈥檝e had a blast so far.鈥�