I have been doing math for as long as I can remember. My father was a math professor, so I took advantage of that when I was little… by learning calculus when I was nine. In high school, I was involved with the AMCs (American Mathematics Competitions). I did well enough to make top 50 out of 300,000+.
Anyway… I wasn’t a math major when I started out at Rutgers - I was an EE major. What a mistake that was. I’ve decided to become a math major after taking Advanced Calculus in the Fall 2003 semester. The story behind how I got into this course is somewhat amusing. First, I had to obtain a prerequisite override (over Introduction to Mathematical Reasoning, which is a class training monkeys how to use mathematical induction) from Dr. Speer, a holder of an important position in the Undergraduate Mathematics Program (I don’t exactly recall what his position was called. Nor does anyone know what he really does in his office…). So he gave me the final exam from the previous semester, which was done in fifteen minutes. However, Rutgers has this annoying policy of not letting the freshmen to pick/change classes until the first day of the semester. And Advanced Calculus being Advanced Calculus, the sections filled up really quickly. In the end, I had to go to Speer and say something along the lines of, “oh for some reason, I need a special permission number to take 311. I think it’s because I’m an engineer, not a math major.” Of course, this is complete bullshit, but Speer fell for it and two hours later, I was sitting in the class. Nonetheless, Advanced Calculus was fun enough (the professor, Lara Alcock, was simply amazing) to change my major to mathematics.
After that, I took Math Logic from Prof. Simon Thomas. I believe his first words to me were after I asked a question, to which he responded, “You know. Lowly beings, such as undergraduates *stare* shouldn’t be allowed to make me think for more than ten seconds.” Simon was the best lecturer that I’ve seen at Rutgers and ended up taking four courses that he taught. Eventually, he was somehow appointed to be the chair of the Math Honors Track committee, and he forced me to apply… and named himself as my adviser. Well, I guess worse things have happened. After taking a bunch of courses, I am interested in harmonic/functional analysis and combinatorics.
Currently, I’m attending UCLA doing the Ph.D. program in mathematics.
Mathematics Courses Taken at Rutgers
Undergraduate
311 Advanced Calculus I
350 Linear Algebra
354 Linear Optimization
373 Numerical Analysis
403 Complex Variables
411 Real Analysis I
412 Real Analysis II
432 Differential Geometry
461 Mathematical Logic
491 Putnam Seminar
492 Expander Graphs Seminar
Graduate
501 Real Analysis I
503 Complex Analysis I
532 Differential Geometry
548 Geometry and Topology
551 Abstract Algebra I
552 Abstract Algebra II
569 Descriptive Set Theory
581 Graph Theory
582 Combinatorics I
587 Correlation Inequalities
587 Additive Combinatorics
621 Financial Math I