Hey there, I'm Ties!
I'm an applied mathematician and software engineer currently working in the logistics of healthcare. I enjoy board and video games, reading science(-fiction) and fantasy, and am politically active.
I also like to approach aspects of real life like a puzzle: using code and math to analyze, abstract, and subsequently solve a problem or explain emergent phenomena.
One of my passions is to share this knowledge!
Code
Programming is not just about writing code that works. It's about creating systems that are easy to understand, extend, and adapt to changing requirements, and whose behaviour can easily be verified to be correct. Any problem can be solved in lots of ways, but the one that adds the least unnecessary complexity (or none at all) is the best; the best workdays are not those when I write the most code, they're those when I can remove lines of code, while maintaining or even adding functionality.
Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. Edsger W. Dijkstra
Math
Mathematics is as much a mindset as it is a field of study: it is all about breaking down a problem into well-defined parts that can be reasoned about. Though notation and jargon may be confusing to those unfamiliar with it, math is definitely not complicated - the entire point is to simplify!
People think that mathematics is complicated. Mathematics is the simple bit, it's the stuff we can understand. It's cats that are complicated. I mean, what is it in those little molecules and stuff that make one cat behave differently to another, or that make a cat? And how do you define a cat? I have no idea. John H. Conway
Putting it all together
So if good code is simple code, and math is about making things simpler, it seems natural to combine the two! That's exactly what we'll do in this blog: using code to explain difficult math, and using math to write simple code!
Always remember, however, that there's usually a simpler and better way to do something than the first way that pops into your head. Donald E. Knuth
Check out the list of articles here.