Sage

I have experience tutoring online and in-person for subjects including mathematics, programming, and engineering. I have a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Arizona State University and I tutor 8-College.

My tutoring style:

When teaching mathematics, I always try to distill the material to the core ideas, which are often quite simple and intuitive. In mathematics, simple ideas often get clouded with details, and while the details are important, it can be incredibly useful for a learner to first gain an intuitive understanding of the concepts and ideas at play before diving into the details. For instance, when I took a class on topology at ASU, the professor illustrated to us how many ideas in topology which involve higher-dimensional space (and even infinite-dimensional space!) can be intuitively understood by drawing a simple two-dimensional picture. This is the kind of intuition which I always encourage when learning mathematics.

Success story:

I had a student who was majoring in philosophy and was looking for help with a formal logic course. Most philosophy students are required to take formal logic, but many philosophy students struggle with this course since it is so different from what they are familiar with in other courses; instead of reading philosophical essays and writing papers, a formal logic course is essentially a mathematics course, except it is even more rigorous and detailed than a typical math course. While the student I had was doing alright in homework assignments, they were lacking confidence in their ability to do well in an exam setting. I worked with them on their homework assignments, demonstrating how I would approach each problem and explaining what kind of techniques I use to intuit which approach is likely to work.  Through our sessions, they gained a lot of confidence and were doing well at solving problems on their own, and they ultimately did very well in the class.

Hobbies and interests:

In my spare time, I enjoy learning mathematics and thinking about various mathematics problems that I have come across. I also play classical piano and listen to a lot of classical music, particularly solo piano; I also like to explore other genres of music, particularly experimental or avante-garde genres. I'm also interested in tech—I like to code and mess around with my Linux setup.