Author: Nihal Uppugunduri

Categories
Math

On the Circularity of Mathematics

It is a well-known, but uneasy, admission that the foundations of mathematics seem to be inherently circular. Indeed, we may for example list out the axioms for the positive integers, say using the Peano formulation, but in writing down this list we already use numbers: identifying the first axiom, then the second axiom, and so on. Even if we argue that we need only formally specify a set of axioms rather than a list, this still makes the axiomatic formulation of sets circular, whether with Zermelo-Fraenkel or another system.

Continue reading “On the Circularity of Mathematics”
Categories
Tech

Writing Effective Unit Tests

You’re patting yourself on the back, proud of the code you’ve just written for a cool new feature. You’re itching to add it to your organization’s repository and see customers use it as soon as possible, but you can’t. You now need to write a bunch of unit tests that meet your organization-mandated “code coverage” level. You begrudgingly sit down and start to hammer out the tests, thinking, why? “I’ve already written the code, why do I have to go through this bureaucracy?”

In this post, I’ll discuss what unit tests are useful for, why they can seem so annoying to write, and how to write them more effectively.

Continue reading “Writing Effective Unit Tests”
Categories
Education

Implementing Interactivity in Online Courses

Before last year, online education was somewhat more of a Silicon Valley experiment in the ways tech could enhance aspects of education and address some common issues with it. With the advent of COVID-19, schools that ordinarily wouldn’t have considered such a radical proposal anytime soon have been forced to live and breathe it fully. It’s not a stretch, then, to say that the kinks are still being ironed out in delivering effective online education. But as it becomes more prevalent and important, we must address those issues now more than ever. Let’s talk about one of the long-standing arguments against online courses that has been continually invoked until recently: classroom interactivity.

Continue reading “Implementing Interactivity in Online Courses”
Categories
Tech

Towards Systems Integration

Google. Apple. Amazon. Facebook. Microsoft. They all market directly to consumers. However, their consumer products, especially when free of cost, can be supported by high-value business models for enterprises. For example, AWS is a major cash cow for Amazon, and in general, businesses pay big money for enterprise tech for later payoffs due to the increased efficiency. Additionally, innovation in enterprise tech has a positive developmental feedback effect on consumer tech, whereby production processes can be improved and form compounding sequences of “improving improvements”. Enterprise tech thus produces fundamental value for enterprises and consumers alike.

Continue reading “Towards Systems Integration”