Tyler Lian, B.S. 2020

2020 Major: Mathematics; minors in Statistics and Chemistry

How has being a Mathematics graduate from Duke helped shape you personally and/or professionally?

"First and foremost, pursuing math at Duke gave me the chance to explore topics and approaches to thinking that I just really enjoyed for my own sake, which proved to me how important it can be to learn and grow without the external pressure of figuring out "what I'm going to do" with my degree. Medicine, my current field, is often described as a series of checklists or hoops to jump through, but I think my time with math taught me the value of creative play, asking good questions, and letting myself be guided by my own sense of what's fulfilling to me. Of course, studying math has also given me a lot of practical abilities, often not ones I would expect too! I think I've left Duke with a unique approach to abstracting and organizing information, recognizing patterns, and problem-solving scenarios. I also think I've gained a better intuition for what methodological rigor should look like - whether in research statistics or even other clinical realms - that pushes my work forward even if I don't immediately know yet exactly how that rigor should take shape."

What advice would you give students in Duke's Mathematics programs?

"Get to know your classmates - some of the most humble, genuinely passionate people I knew at Duke, and often the same group crops up from one class to another. I'm very lucky that we could lean on each other when lectures went way over our heads or when problem sets were challenging. Get to know the faculty - I loved my advisor as well as so many professors I had. They were important sources of support for me through my time in college, and their dedication to education and nurturing students was really inspiring. Finally, as much as some insist that it's a form of ultimate objectivity, just a reminder that math is a tool created by people and shaped by history. Be critical of all the ways quantitative methods have been employed to drive injustice and oppression and all the ways it still happens today (e.g., facial recognition, algorithmic policing and sentencing)."