Introduction, due on September 7

My name is Adam Fidler (five bucks if you come up with a pun I haven't heard), and I am currently a junior in the ACME program. I have taken the BYU Math equivalents of 113, 290, 313, 314, 334, and 341. I initially transferred to BYU with the intention of pursuing a CS degree double-minoring in mathematics and linguistics (because of my interest in NLP and computational linguistics), however upon learning about the ACME program I realized that I could essentially achieve all three of these in one major.

In my experience, the professors that I have most appreciated are those that will truly instill a passion in the material. One such professor was my physics professor at UVU, Professor Paul Mills. He taught things so matter-of-factly and concisely that not only were we extremely prepared for our exams, but we gained immense conceptual understandings of the material as well. Even after three years, the things I learned in his class stick with me more than any other class I have taken.

While many of the things we learned weren't particularly clear at first, he taught us how to solve the problems, knowing that deeper understanding would come through repetition; however, not once did I feel like I was banging my head against the wall, struggling to figure out how to even begin to solve a problem. He taught us the "how", and the "why" came quickly through our own efforts (which is much more than I can say about virtually any math course I've taken since transferring to BYU, with perhaps the notable exception of Professor Allen's Differential Equations course).