Connor Thomas Ahlbach ’09 shared with Riordan the news of his new math book, Euclidean Linear Algebra, which was published on March 28 and consists of 322 pages.
Lala Chan ’26 said, “I want to major in math for college, so this book will be useful to me in the future.”
The book uses theoretical examples and a variety of problems to help students get a deeper understanding of linear algebra. After giving an introduction about vectors and linear systems, it focuses on linear maps and their different methods, like operations on linear maps, diagonalizing linear maps, dimensions, subspaces, and their relations to linear maps, etc.
The book also includes a page with definition references, answer keys to problems, and object charts.
Mathematics teacher Mary Ann Datoc said, “I like math because it is a behind-the-scenes subject. You cannot do science or engineering without math. Your business will not be successful unless you look at the data in your reports to see if you made a profit or not.”
During his days at Riordan, Ahlbach always showed interest in math and got placed in Algebra II/Trigonometry in his freshman year, according to his freshman math teacher, Ottilie Valverde. His passion for math thrived even more under the influence of his freshman math teacher, Ottilie Valverde. He even competed in the mathematics league in 2009 and got 35 out of 36 questions correct.
“Connor Ahlbach was an excellent student,” said Valverde.
Ahlbach gave a copy of his math book to Valverde with a handwritten note expressing his gratitude to his favorite math teacher.
After graduating high school, he went to Harvey Mudd College from 2009 to 2013, then studied at the University of Washington for six years where he earned a Ph.D. He then graduated in 2019. He is now a mathematics lecturer at Texas State University and his main teaching interests are discrete math, linear algebra, abstract algebra, and combinatorics.
Ahlbach said, “There is nobody so intelligent that math won’t challenge them and make them feel dumb sometimes.”
