I got my Ph.D. in mathematics from Brown University in 1978. I started out as a pure mathematician in the “Queen of Mathematics” – number theory and that lasted for about 20 years. But then I left academia for good. Once I stopped teaching, I have, among other things, been a visiting scientist at IBM’s Watson Labs and a program director at the National Science Foundation. I’ve written or co-written many books about programming and taught programmers for more than 20 years. I’m most proud of the fact that I was the co-founder and CEO of Apress (www.apress.com) which I made the fastest growing publisher for IT professionals in the world during the period 2000-2007.
But then I honored my pledge to step down when Apress got big enough to need an HR department and I’ve been (semi) retired ever since! Of course, I have had to fill my time somehow and I’ve been learning a fair amount of statistics which seems to be the best fit for my talents and my current interest in practical rather than theoretical mathematics.
Finally, besides this blog of course, I’m working on a book for non-mathematicians tentatively called “Numeracy can save you: the basic math and statistics you need to know to be safer during a pandemic”