What are our alumni doing?
Amanda Peterson
Graduation Year: 1999
Major(s) and minor(s): mathematics major, information systems minor
Post-grad education: MS Applied Mathematics, MS Statistics, PhD Statistics
Current position: Applied Research Mathematician
Employer: Department of Defense
The most helpful aspects of my undergraduate education in mathematics were: The subjects that I have used most include optimization, linear algebra, statistics, and technical writing. I also appreciate the operations research course that I took as it clearly demonstrated the application of mathematics to industrial applications. My first position after graduate school was in an operations research department.
The advice I’d offer to current undergraduate students in mathematics: STEM fields are in high demand, so you picked a good major! If you have time, I would also add some computer programming courses to your schedule.
In a typical day in my work: My position as a researcher in a data science department enables me to work on a variety of interesting problems. Machine learning, statistical modeling, and R programming are tools that I find useful for many of the applications that I work on. Recently my focus has been on recommender systems to help employees find internal products of interest (similar to Netflix movie recommendation). I also teach as an adjunct professor of statistics at the National Cryptologic University.
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