Writing
RSSEssays / Papers
Closeread Feature Tour
A walkthrough of Closeread's layouts, highlighting, zoom and scroll effects.
About Me
Who I am outside of resumes and papers. What I like, what I don't like, and some random facts.
Gabriel's Horn
Gabriel's Horn is a shape formed by rotating y = 1/x around the x-axis and somehow has a finite volume but an infinite surface area. Looking at improper integrals gives some insight about the Painter's Paradox it creates.
The Fractured Superego: Asian American Identity and the Limits of Classical Psychoanalysis
Freud's model of the psyche breaks down when applied to Asian American identity. Starting from the 1992 Los Angeles uprisings and drawing on a number of psychoanalysts, see how contradictory racial expectations leave the Asian American psyche permanently unresolved.
Modeling Cyclones with Polar Coordinates
Modeling the spiral rainbands of tropical cyclones with a logarithmic polar equation. Using derivatives, I explain why the spiral expands the way it does, then compute the arc length and enclosed area of a real storm sized example.
Shrek, Toni Morrison, Subversion, and the Postmodernist Truth
A comparison of Toni Morrison's novel A Mercy and the Shrek film franchise, both of which set out to subvert a traditional story. Morrison's treatment of motherhood and power holds up to scrutiny while Shrek mostly falls back on the tropes it tries to reject.
Abuse and Humanity in The Black Cat
A look at Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Black Cat." The narrator's hypocrisy, deflection of blame, and obsession with control aren't symptoms of madness, but proof that the capacity for abuse is a deeply human trait.
Greek Goddesses and Gender
An analysis of how Homer's Iliad treats goddesses and mortal women completely differently. Divinity, not gender, is what grants Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera the independence, agency, and power that mortal women like Briseis and Andromache are denied.
Presentations / Posters
Plot Twist: NYC Airbnb Data Visualizations
Different data visualizations of NYC Airbnb prices I made show how the same data can provide insight or mislead readers. Visualizations hand-edited or made with Matplotlib, pandas, and seaborn in Python.
Euler's Basel Problem
How Euler solved the 1734 Basel problem. By treating sin(x)/x as an infinite polynomial, you can prove the sum of the reciprocals of the squares is exactly π²/6.
Intro to Web Accessibility
An introduction to web accessibility for my baby web developer students.