No Employees
My first job out of grad school was, regrettably, at a Bitcoin startup. There are a lot of bad things to say about that experience, but if I try hard, I can...
The same colored grass
Recently Dan Abramov, an experienced software engineer who does a lot of frontend development, has been learning real analysis via lean and posting his...
Decision Logs
I haven’t been writing much here recently, mostly because (a) I have a new infant at home, and (b) I’ve been spending much of my free time migrating my blog...
Technology as Power Transfer
Though I've forsaken cryptocurrency and blockchain in my personal and professional life, I currently work in homomorphic encryption. Both areas have fertile...
Programming Jigs
In woodworking there's the concept of a jig, which is a sort of ad hoc stencil for woodworking projects. You might fashion a jig by screwing two wood blocks...
Weak and Strong Algebraic Structures
Weak and Strong Algebraic Structures Hillel Wayne's recent newsletter on monoids got me thinking again about an old question of mine: why are some algebraic...
NP-hard does not mean easy
Recently the internet resurfaced my 2017 article, "NP-hard does not mean hard". I wrote the article mainly to express the nuance that NP-hardness only models...
Thoughts about what worked in math circles
Thoughts about what worked in math circles After about 7 months of math circles with a group of 7- turning 8-year-old boys and girls, I decided to take a...
Structuring Technical Blog Posts
Recent discussions with colleagues and friends have me thinking a bit about the writing process, and how to structure technical exposition. I am one of those...
What happens when it's all streamlined?
One of my son’s favorite songs these days is (oddly, and thanks to recommendation algorithms) “The Worker’s Song”, as performed by The Longest Johns. My son...
A Foray into Math Circles
This year I’ve started facilitating math circles in Portland. For those who don’t know, a math circle is a small, extracurricular gathering of similarly-aged...
Career update: homomorphic encryption
I recently had my final week working in the data center planning side of Google. July would have marked five years of my focus on integer linear programming,...
Update on Practical Math for Programmers
Last May I wrote about a new book I’m working on, tentatively titled “Practical Math for Programmers” (working subtitle, “A Tour of Math in Production”, h/t...
Ideas for math tools
Ideas for math tools Mathematicians have some great software available. Even domain-specific systems like Macaulay2, a programming language for commutative...
Programming as a Vehicle for Math
Programming as a Vehicle for Math In March 2020, I gave a talk at Math for America, an organization that fosters professional development for K-12 math...
The End Goal of Math is Efficient Computation
[Nb. this is a very rough draft but I’m sad I’m not writing much these days so I want to get the juices flowing again.] Mathematicians (especially pop-math...
Monorepos and Forced Migrations
Monorepos and Forced Migrations By most metrics, Google is a great place to work. Top tier compensation, free food, and largely co-workers who want do...
A survey of mathy jobs
Mathy Jobs Some folks expressed interest in hearing about what sort of mathy jobs there are, beyond the standard of academia and teaching. I had to think...
Layering Abstractions
Layering Abstractions When designing software systems, we care about flexibility as requirements change. One might break that down into two rough parts....
A week of book writing
tl;dr: I’ve started working in earnest on a new book, tentatively titled, Practical Math for Programmers. Sign up for a mailing list to be notified when it’s...