Background
Schwarz's background in mathematics is considered one of his strengths as a reporter, particularly in his investigation of football brain injuries. Schwarz's father taught him how to compute square roots when he was 4 years old, and after becoming interested in baseball as a teenager he wound up as the statistician for the baseball team at Scarsdale High School, where he graduated in 1986. Schwarz graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania in 1990 with a B.A. in mathematics. It was at Penn that Schwarz began covering sports for the school newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian. He decided to pursue a career in journalism rather than to follow his original plan of becoming a high school math teacher.
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