The Short Version

Here are some things that may be of interest regarding the person behind it all. I have a mind for mathematics, and a heart for philosophy; to me, the two are a natural pair. Mathematics gives me the tools to go deep, to be rigorous, thorough, and precise. Philosophy keeps me honest. It pushes me to consider how others would think, to weigh competing perspectives, and to resist the trap of over-optimization. Together they shape how I approach most problems: digging into the details of something abstract until it becomes concrete and applicable. It's the reason I landed on the name AppliedAbstractions.net.

My favorite books could be supporting evidence of that same duality: The Alchemist, Gorgias, and How to Lie with Statistics. If you haven't read it, HTLWS is not at all advocating that one should actually lie with statistics; the intention was to arm people with the ability to see through the charades often paraded arounde as evidence, and I highly recommend it to anyone who will listen.

Outside of work, I'm drawn to things that challenge me to think or get me out into the world. I love chess, hiking, and photography. If I'm being honest, there's a common thread: I tend to break everything down into its fundamental components. Put a game in front of me and I'm already thinking about how to optimize my strategy (did I mention I can get a bit competitive?). Give me a puzzle and I'm not resting until I find a solution. I even built my own blackjack table and wrote a guaranteed Wordle solver just for the satisfaction of it. I didn't do these things because the world lacks online blackjack, I did them because I like taking the metaphorical car apart to understand it before I build the engine myself. On the other side of that same coin, I find real peace in nature, particularly mountains and deep woods, where the only thing you can hear is the world doing its thing. I travel every chance I get. I'm also learning Korean, a big fan of the Kurzgesagt YouTube channel, and I have a substantial sweet tooth.

More relevant to my work, I've built projects across R, Python, SQL, Java, JavaScript, C++, MATLAB, and Haskell, and picked up some HTML and CSS putting this site together. My education is rooted in Mathematics and Computer Science, I studied at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and graduated Summa Cum Laude in 2022 with a BS in Applied Mathematics. I was in my senior year when I studied for the first actuarial exam on probability, and passed on the first go. I accepted an offer at Aon in a niche field of reinsurance focusing on the credit risk transfer of mortgages. I spent most of my time dealing with massive data sets, testing proprietary models, and building/maintaining libraries used by the team for automating several functions. At the end of 2023, a recruiter reached out to me about an opportunity in Connecticut. This was for another reinsurance broker called Gallagher Re. I was brought on as a "technical broker" for their mortgage team, someone who could work with clients as well as debug a script and interpret model results. I enjoyed a little over 2 years in CT before returning home to my beloved Chicago.

I am now looking to pivot my career with a natural progression from actuarial work into data science. I'm currently working with a mentor to guide my self-driven development and make that shift as seamlessly as possible. What I'm looking for is simple: a company that wants to invest in growth and puts interesting problems in front of the people solving them. My studies will give me the theory, my projects the application and experience.

Thank you for taking the time to learn a bit more about me. If you have any interest in having a chat, please reach out to me on LinkedIn (you can find my profile at the top or the bottom of the page). I'd love the chance to connect with someone new and perhaps even collaborate on a new project together.

All the best,
Patrick