Gabby Abato

Undergraduate Fellow, Team Humans

Math major and rising senior Gabby Abato joins the field station as one of two Humans of Tyson journalists. Read that sentence again. 

You are a mathematician. Why are you writing? 

“I like how I think when I do math. I feel a sense of inner balance and peace. But the process of thinking through a math concept is not that different from writing my thoughts or reasoning for a paper. It activates a similar part of my brain.”  

What are the parallels between the analytical process of hard math logic and the creative process of writing a profile? 

“People think math has one answer. In a sense it does, but really there is a true statement you are trying to prove. That is a creative process because you have to think about all that you know, and how you are going to use those ideas and manipulate them to prove what you want to prove. That way of thinking is just as creative as writing. Writing is creative in that you are literally creating, and manufacturing something new. Many math concepts have been proven for hundreds and hundreds of years, so you are not exactly creating something new, but the ideas are new in your head. 

Sometimes you write without thinking about where you are going to end, but usually, you have an idea of where you are going. That is similar to a math proof; you always know what point you are trying to get to. You have a point A and a point B and ask, ‘How does the information from point A allow me to get to point B using some other stuff that I know?’ That is math. I used to not like writing, but now I do!”