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Sara Ford

Sara Ford
Affiliation:
Microsoft Corporation
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Summary

I am a Software Design Engineer in Test for the Microsoft Corporation, working on the Visual Studio Core Team. Visual Studio is a development environment that allows everyone from the ‘Introduction to Computer Science’ student to the professional software engineer to write programs and develop software. I graduated from Mississippi State University with a double major in computer science and mathematics and a minor in French, but I put all the emphasis on my mathematics degree during my interview.

Mathematics taught me logical thinking and problem solving skills—skills all employers look for in new candidates. While interviewing at Microsoft, I introduced myself as a problem solver. What made me so special, in comparison to all the other applicants? My answer was simple, “I have a mathematics degree.”

Mathematics builds the foundation for learning how to solve problems. A chemical engineer is a chemical engineer, a biologist is a biologist, but a mathematician can learn how to become either one. I never took a college course on how to test software, and yet I was hired as a software tester. The recruiter understood that someone with a mathematics background has the discipline and the analytical way of thinking it takes to test new types of software.

One of my job descriptions is to automate testing. Automation is code that simulates what a user might experience when interacting with a program and records any unexpected or undesired results as failures, more commonly known as bugs.

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Publisher: Mathematical Association of America
Print publication year: 2014

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  • Sara Ford
  • Edited by Andrew Sterrett
  • Book: 101 Careers in Mathematics
  • Online publication: 05 September 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.5948/9781614441168.046
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  • Sara Ford
  • Edited by Andrew Sterrett
  • Book: 101 Careers in Mathematics
  • Online publication: 05 September 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.5948/9781614441168.046
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Sara Ford
  • Edited by Andrew Sterrett
  • Book: 101 Careers in Mathematics
  • Online publication: 05 September 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.5948/9781614441168.046
Available formats
×