Patrick Carney earned an MS in Mathematics from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. He teaches mathematics at the De Paul Catholic High School in Wayne, NJ, and in 1993, received a Distinguished Teacher Award from the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars. He has taught mathematics in five states over the last 43 years and has been department chairman in three different schools. He also has been active in teacher preparation. For the past 14 years, he has spent his summers as a staff member of the Rutgers Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, where they introduce mathematics teachers to research that they can replicate in their classrooms and are now working on interdisciplinary programs with biology teachers. Previously he was math coordinator for the high schools in the Diocese of Pittsburgh for ten years. In that position, he designed in-service programs for the teachers in the system.

He is also an active member of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and, through that organization, he been selected as one of nine authors who write activities that appear on the CBS web site for math teachers to use with their classes for lessons that relate to the various episodes of the TV show NUMB3RS.