Writing

Behold my blog!

  • Who's the best tennis player?

    General  ·  · 1 min read

    For the Summer of Math Exposition 4 (SoME4) contest, I cooked up the video above. The idea is simple: can we use a mathematical model (the Elo system) to find the current most skillful tennis player?

    I was devastated to learn that people have been using Elo for sports for...

  • On writing essays for fun

    General  ·  · 2 min read

    If you understand something well enough, you can write it down. But the converse follows too.

    “You don’t know what you think until you write it.” – paraphrased from Professor Dorit Abusch, Cornell Univesity

    That doesn’t mean you should write paragraphs and paragraphs for every single thing you will talk...

  • Teaching is not about the teacher

    General  ·  · 1 min read

    When I watch a Veritasium video, or a Feynman lecture, a voice in my head says “how inspiring but also irritating that I haven’t done that. How can I be like them?” For those with narcassistic tendencies, this is an easy misconception to fall into. When we try to imitate...

  • The unusual effectiveness of mastermind circles

    General  ·  · 2 min read

    Everyone needs a place to be heard, to be supported, and to be pushed. My leadership quest team, The Liberators, created Mastermind Circles, a 10-week program where Cornell students set semester-long goals and worked towards them. There were a variety of goals from securing a job to running a YouTube...

  • A lens on machine learning for the general public

    Computer Science  ·  · 8 min read

    What is machine learning? Why is it so hot right now? What makes a good machine learning algorithm? And what are the ethical consequences of machine learning?

    What is machine learning?

    Say we are programming a computer to play Super Mario Bros. How would we tell it to complete the...