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Using maths to optimally renew my passport

I recently had to renew my passort. For this, I needed a recent headshot of myself. As I didn’t have one at home, I went to a photo booth. For the 5€ that I paid, I could have up to three shoots taken. However, I (crucially) had to decide whether I wanted to use one […]

How to solve y”(x)=f(y(x))

This post is exactly what its title suggests. It turns out that differential equations of the form y”(x)=f(y(x)), where f is any function of your choice (which depends on the function y (x) that you want to solve for, but not on its derivatives), come up a lot in applied maths. And now it may […]

Tips for giving talks

Introduction I gave quite a few online talks in 2020 and I’m very happy to have done so. Giving talks is great. It’s an excellent commitment device if you want to learn or better understand something (and great for signalling, if you care about that). They improve (and are a proof of) your communication skills, […]

Michaelmas 2020

At the end of every term at university, I write a little post about it. I haven’t done that yet about last term, so here I am. In short, the term wasn’t good, so instead, I am using this as a joint post to say goodbye to the year. This was my fourth Michaelmas term, […]

An Update

I’ve been promising an update for a while, so here it is (very schematic, not a fancy post this time!) I’ve been (virtually) doing research for most of the summer, and *tomorrow* I will give a talk about it. Details (and link) here. Cambridge asked us to come back to town for this academic year, […]

What is it like to be an EU student?

At the start of the summer, I participated in a webinar from my college (Christ’s) for prospective undergraduate students from the EU. The UK goverment had just announced that EU students starting a degree at UK university in 2021 or later will have to pay overseas (full) fees, and moreover they will not be able […]

Why I am doing Part III

Quick announcement: I will be giving a talk at The Archimedeans on Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases tomorrow (Friday) at 4pm BST. It is the continuation of my talk in April. The link to event is here. Index Intro What is Part III? Reasons why I have chosen to do Part III A bad reason […]

Why you should get a Kindle

In this post, I’ll argue that, if you read anything, you should get a Kindle. I’ll give what I believe the more important advantages of a Kindle. I’ll also argue against common objections.

How to Stop Being a Perfectionist

For context on the topic and format of this article, see Stop Seeking Permission. I’ve learnt many things beyond maths in the past 4 years (of applying to and studying at Cambridge). One of the most valuable of them has been overcoming perfectionism. I’m glad that, at the times, I found some stuff really hard (and […]

Be a Minimalist

Two years ago I wrote a post explaining 6 ways in which minimalism makes my life better. It was a very popular post, but I haven’t written about it since then. I’d recommend reading it before this one. ( I was going to title this post “On minimalism” but “Be a minimalist” sounds more attractive. […]