Andrew Lewis
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What he does:
- As an engineer, Andrew works in the ads-backend group, developing tools and serving infrastructure at the core of the Google AdWords system.
- One of the main components he has been working on uses a probabilistic model to estimate traffic received by customers. He also uses mathematics extensively in estimating the running time and reliability of systems he develops. More generally, the logical reasoning skills that mathematics coursework helped develop are used in absolutely everything he does in developing software.
Andrew's background:
- Andrew received a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science, from the University of Washington, Spring 2006.
- Andrew came into college intending to major in computer science only, or possibly another engineering discipline. He had had a negative experience with math courses in high school, and wasn't interested in majoring in math.
- After a number of positive experiences in introductory math classes, theoretical computer science, philosophical logic and linguistics, he realized that logical reasoning and formal systems were extremely relevant to everything he thought he wanted to do. These topics were also extremely interesting to work with, and this convinced him to take some advanced math courses beyond what was required for his degree in computer science. He finally decided to major in math after finishing the second year accelerated calculus series.
Advice for students:
- If you want to do a double major, figure out a rough schedule of all the courses you will need as soon as possible. Otherwise, it can get complicated to complete both programs.
- Take interesting, nontrivial elective coursework outside your chosen discipline, rather than the usual easy filler classes. You might find something interesting and essential that you would not otehrwise be exposed to.