A blog about math, extremely niche interests, and a guy having fun.
Motivation For the last three months, I’ve been preparing applications to graduate schools in Mathematics. The process has forced me to ask questions I’ve been avoiding: do I actually want to commit the next five to seven years of my life to this field? Not just the mathematics itself (I love that part) but the culture and the unspoken rules that govern who gets to do mathematics and how we talk…
Motivation For the last six months, I’ve been doing research on SAT solvers. More specifically, model counting. I’m a math major, so naturally I thought “let’s count things” sounded like a good summer project. The question was simple: does the phase transition phenomenon (where SAT instances go from easy to hard to easy again as you increase constraints) extend to counting solutions? Quick primer:…
I submitted this to a math poetry contest a while back and got honorable mention! I figured I’d share it here too. Scratch Paper Each sheet, a battlefield of crossed-out lines, arrows veering nowhere, circles chasing dreams. Three hours deep, seventeen pages sprawled— my proof still wrong, but now wrong in new ways. Like archeology in reverse, I stack layers of failure, each attempt preserved in…
Motivation Ask three people what computation is and you may get three answers that barely seem related. A computer scientist might talk about programs, evaluation, and types. A logician might talk about propositions, derivations, and normalization. A category theorist might draw arrows until everyone else leaves the room. For a long time I treated these as neighboring subjects. They shared…
Motivation Everywhere we look, computation surrounds us—yet confusion about its true nature persists just as universally. Ask a computer scientist about computation, and you’ll hear of algorithms and Turing machines. Pose the same question to a logician, and watch them expound on formal proofs and axioms. A category theorist, meanwhile, might wave their hands toward morphisms and elaborate…
Motivation I was procrastinating on Reddit at 2am and found this thread asking why mathematicians care about multiple proofs of the same theorem. Once something’s proven, it’s proven, right? Then I spent four hours reading about proof complexity and had a little crisis. Oh no, not another rabbit hole… This one’s good though! Turns out Gödel predicted P vs NP in 1956, so I’ll use this as an excuse…
Motivation As a college student, I’ve had my fair share of data loss nightmares. From the time my final project got corrupted right before finals week to accidentally deleting important files, I’ve learned the hard way that regular backups are non-negotiable . Fortunately, most universities provide students with cloud storage – in my case, Rice University gives each student a generous 2TB of Box…
Ergo: A collection of short stories A while back I said I would finish writing a book — I’m still working on it. In the meantime, here are some short stories I’ve written. Passengers The subway car sat motionless, its hum reverberating through the stagnant air, mingling with the metallic tang of iron, the acrid bite of oil, and a faint, sour undertone that clung to the platform walls. Inside, I…
Motivation Yes, I am a math major, and yes, I am a linguistics major. I know what you’re thinking: “Of course, he is into category theory and formal languages because of this 🙄.” Wrong. I am into those things, but that’s just because I’m a “nerd”™ not because of my majors. The truth is I like Math because [too long to explain here], and I like Linguistics because [also too long to explain here],…
I consider myself lucky; I wasn’t born with many things, but when I needed help, I had people willing to help me. Truthfully, I got to where I currently am due to some luck – that’s a privilege. Unfortunately, some people haven’t been as lucky. Look, I don’t consider myself a brilliant person – and that’s okay because I can keep learning. It’s Okay to be dumb right now, but it’s not Okay to keep…
Motivation Ever since TJ said “Personalized Development Environment,” the phrase latched onto me like a cobweb in a mineshaft. A Personalized Development Environment (PDE) describes an ideal setup that is tailored to your needs and preferences – it lies between a bare-bone text editor and a full-fledged IDE. It is a place where you can be productive, efficient, and comfortable. It is a place that…
Motivation Time and time again, I see people struggling with their workflow. They are either too slow, too inefficient, or too unproductive. I have been there, and I have seen the light. I even taught a college class on how to maximize your workflow. However, now it is time to share my personal workflow with the world. This means I will assume you know the basics of these tools in order for us to…
Motivation A few days ago, I was working on a UI framework (in rust btw) for a personal project; abruptly, I decided to check my group chat and noticed a screenshot of a question from our university’s anonymous forum, Fizz. As it so happened, the question was a math problem–instantly, it became clear to me that I was nerd sniped (as any math major would). The question was simple and one you have…
Truth be told, this is not the first time I decided this nor will it be the last, so let’s make this short in case future me reads this with shame. In the past, when I decided to do this, I mostly didn’t . Sometimes I started, and sometimes I got a chapter done, but typically, it ended with me saying, “nah, this ain’t it.” As you can guess, I’m my worst enemy. Writing is scary–at least to me, and…
After watching Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (ATSV) for the fifth time in theaters today, I finally realized why I adore this movie. In fact, this simple realization made me understand why I wasn’t so big on the Tom Holland or Andrew Garfield films: New York City and the spirit the city brings to the hero. Batman has Gotham City, Superman has Metropolis, and Spider-Man has New York—the Big…
Motivation In this day and age, every university pairs a student’s email address with their administered Google suite platform. Typically, for most students, this default saves them a lot of trouble—that is, if you stay within the constraints of what your university considers “normal use”. For instance, if you want to use Google domains, Google cloud’s APIs, or customize your Google security…
At this point, I’ve seen Puss In Boots: The Last Wish at least seven times. Once in the theater, and the rest at home with the company of my nephew and niece. Now, let me tell you, I was originally late to the party: the first time I saw it was in theaters in late January, but I immediately fell in love with the movie. It simply reminded me of the first time I saw Spider-verse: a thrilling ride…
So, I guess I have a blog now! It uses Zola and is hosted on GitHub Pages . The theme is custom, but it is based on the Apollo theme . Plus Ayu-dark for codeblocks. Here is my fork: Redux . Mermaid graph LR A[Start] --> B[Initialize] B --> C[Processing] C --> D[Complete] D --> E[Success] style A fill:#f9f,stroke:#333 style E fill:#9f9,stroke:#333 LaTeX Inline Math $(a+b)^2$ = $a^2 + 2ab + b^2$ A…