(Oops, itās been like 1.5 months since) Ring Premiere happened!
For almost a year now, Iāve had the privilege of being on the Class of 2026 Ring Committee! Ring Committee, also known as RingComm, is a group of twelve students tasked with designing the Brass Rat for their class.Ā
If you donāt already know, the Brass Rat is a class ring that MIT undergraduates receive at the end of their second year. It has an extensive history (that I wonāt go into but you can read about it here and here) and has made appearances on the fingers of Tony Stark, the John Harvard statue, and soon, my classmates.
In the several months leading up to Premiere, RingComm had been moving in silence. standing on business, even. working on the ring design in private. In order to ensure the secrecy of the design until Premiere, we even resorted to taping CVS pharmacy receipts and crumpled pset packets over the door window of the classroom where weād meet twice a week.
But on February 10th, it was finally time to unveil the design to the entire class!
The day started off rather unassuming. For the first few hours, my tasks consisted of lugging boxes of t-shirts and toothpick holders,01 i wasn't talking about shot glasses at all. why would you even think that. blowing up balloons and fluffing up decorative pom-poms, and testing how far I could reasonably chuck various mini beaver Squishmallows into the auditorium seats. By 5pm, weād finished running through our dress rehearsals and setting up decorations. All that was left for the committee was to get changed and get hyped.Ā
At 6:30pm, doors opened. I was holed up backstage as my classmates were filtering into Kresge Auditorium, but I could slowly hear the ambient sounds get louder and rowdier as more and more people filed in. At some point, I poked my head out to assess the crowd situation, and saw various greek life/living communities and friend groups dressed in funky hats and group costumes, as is custom for Premiere.
Finally, at 7:05pm, lights dimmed to outrageous cheer.
This year RingComm tried something a little new for Premiere ā we filmed short little video skits to play before each duo walked on stage to present. By the time Hailey P. ā26 and Sean H. ā26, our Co-Premiere chairs, walked on stage to kick us off with the Hackerās Map, the decibel levels in the room were insane. Shrieks and hollers broke out every half a sentence, and the crowd only got louder as the presentation progressed. Sabrina C. ā26 and Jamie O. ā26 were up next with the Cambridge and Boston skylines, followed by Nathan K. ā26 and Vicky C. ā26 with the Class Shank, and then Marco A. ā26 and Katrina L. ā26 with the Seal Shank. I practically knew everyoneās lines by heart and I could still barely figure out what anyone was saying over the noise.
Jamie came back to present the winner of the Puzzle Sprint,02 which is super cool, and you can check it out at this link: http://brassrat.mit.edu/2026/puzzlesprint who won a free 14k gold ring! After that, at long last, it was time for me and Ann L. ā26, two of the artists on RingComm, to present the Bezel!
As our video faded out and we walked on stage, we were greeted by a wall of sound. The sheer enormity of Premiere kind of hit me all at once. We forgot to track attendance, but Kresge seats around 1200,03 so basically somewhere between twelve and twelve-hundred people attended, i think and from what I could see squinting against the bright lights, it looked pretty damn close to being full. People always say that Ring Premiere and Ring Delivery are some of the few events in your undergraduate career where you get to see so many people in your class all gathered in one place, and I knew this, but it was still absurd to witness. After months and months of hard work and sealed lips, we were finally getting to show the class of 2026ā¦ the Bezel!
ā¦just kidding. Ann and I actually had the honor of presenting the Joke Bezel, i.e. a silly, fake Bezel that usually precedes the actual Bezel, because we havenāt kept our class waiting long enough.Ā
After getting booād offstage (lovingly, Iām sure), we handed the batons to Helena U. ā26 and Maggie Y. ā26, RingComm Chair and Vice-Chair, to finally present the real Bezel! With that, the entire ring design had been unveiled!
Overall, lots of elements of the design remain similar to what you traditionally see on a Brass Rat, but we added a few unique elements that I particularly like. On various sides of the ring, we show an archer beaver, a sailing beaver, a pistol beaver, and a fencing beaver, to represent the four P.E. classes needed to obtain a Pirateās License at MIT.Ā
Additionally, we included a night sky motif across the ring as a nod to how, like the beaver, our best work as MIT students often happens at night. For example, the Cambridge Skyline, which is usually depicted in the daytime, was shown against the night sky in our rendition. Even the hackerās map took the form of a starry constellation, to guide us through the tunnels just as people once used stars to navigate the seas. (Also, if you look closely, you can see a beaver hidden in the Hackerās Map constellation ā we managed to feature a beaver on every face of the ring!) If youāre curious about the rationale behind other design details, feel free to read more here!
The hype hadnāt ended just yet though. Marco and Katrina, our co-Delivery chairs, returned to announce where the class of 2026ās Ring Delivery would be held! Ring Delivery is the big fancy event where everyone actually gets the rings that they ordered post-Premiere. This year, our Delivery is going to be on May 5th, at the top of the Prudential Center!
Finally, the night was coming to an end. Ring Premiere concluded with the committee members each launching an aforementioned beaver Squishmallow into the crowd! With that, it was a wrap!
Just to be upfront, being a member of the class of 2026 Ring Committee is a lot of work.Ā
The first time the twelve of us all met as a group was actually volunteering for the class of 2025ās Ring Delivery. Our first opportunity to get to know each other was through forced proximity ā the ā25 Ring Committee had us running around sorting over a thousand rings alphabetically, breaking down cardboard boxes, squinting at IDs and spamming Ctrl + F on a check-in spreadsheet, desperately tracking down literally any person who knew how to refill the water dispensers, and whatever other mundanities our class of 2025 overlords demanded04 just kidding, the 25s are chill, and so was ring delivery <3 fear not, future class of 2027 ring committee members ^_^ of us.
However, our work didnāt really begin until a few months later, during the summer. Our first task was to design a logo that would be used later down the line for all of our posters, brochures, website, etc. After many car-ride sketches, Zoom calls in a hotel kitchen in the Canadian Rockies, and only an hour (not bad!) of mulling over slightly different hex codes of gold, we finally had our logo!
Our next biggest undertaking was actually designing the ring, which took six hours of meetings per week over a big chunk of fall semester.Ā
I think a lot of people, MIT students included, have kind of a misconception about how this process actually goes. Not everyone on the committee is an artist; rather, roles range from web chair to publicity chair to treasurer to being in charge of the various events we hold throughout the year, such as study break, Premiere, and Delivery. (Also, shout out to our Chair and Vice-Chair <3) Historically, a minority of the committee actually has the title of an artist. The class of 2026 RingComm, for example, has three ā me, Ann, and Vicky.
By no means are we the only ones who played a hand in the design of the ring, though! In fact, it truly is a group effort. All of the committee members spent a lot of time poring over past websites, logos, ring designs, etc. picking out elements we liked or didnāt like. This helped us decide our direction for the ring design and/or the general ~vibes~05 we ended up going for a more playful, unserious vibe as opposed to a more professional one, shown through the doodles on our instagram posts and the silly pictures when you hover over the committee member headshots on the website :) we wanted to give off. On top of that, each member brainstormed various elements we thought would memorialize the class of 2026ās MIT undergraduate experience.
As artists, our job was to help turn the ideas of the committee into reality. If someone wanted to play around with the idea of including a solar eclipse on the seal shank, or see what the soccer players on the bezel would look like shifted a millimeter to the left, we were on hand to quickly sketch or make adjustments so the committee could see how the design was shaping up in real time.
On top of that, we worked closely with professional artists from Herff Jones, the company that manufactures our rings. They gave us immediate feedback on how well certain details would translate to the small surface of the ring, and ultimately they were the ones who drew the final designs and 3d models in order to manufacture the actual rings.
Each side of the ring came with a lot of iterations. Each time weād meet, weād add new ideas or cut back on others; weād make the tiniest microadjustments, like changing the beaverās tuft of cheek fur on the Bezel or making sure the Lobby 10 doors are centered on the Class Shank; weād do everything we could to make sure the design was as close to perfect as we could get it. Below are just a few out of the dozens of iterations06 the google doc we used to document bezel changes/ideas is literally 60 pages long... we made for the Bezel!Ā
Artists had other responsibilities, too! We were in charge of making designs for everything from posters to stickers to t-shirts! A lot of our work was concentrated around fall semester, but we were on call year-round to help make pubbing materials and merch for all the events.
So yeah, RingComm is undoubtedly a lot of work. But I love it nonetheless!
I think itād come out kind of cheesy and try-hard if I attempt to explain how much RingComm means to me. Itās become a huge part of my life, not just because of the six hours of meetings every week. Everyone on RingComm is so awesomely clever and fun to work with. Theyāve become my ride-or-dies; weāve weathered many ups and downs as a committee, and Iām so excited to see all of our hard work be celebrated at Ring Delivery.
Not to mention, to know that I got to play a part in designing something so iconic, so steeped in tradition and ceremony, is amazing to me. Iāve seen Brass Rats on superheroes and in local cafes, and soon, come May 5th, nearly 98% of my classmates will own the very Brass Rat I helped create. Itās unbelievably fulfilling and mind-blowing.Ā
As a preview, all twelve members of RingComm have a temporary, sample Brass Rat07 mine is a 10k white gold ring with a small bezel size! in various colors and sizes so our classmates can get an idea of what theyāll actually look like. At Ring Delivery, weāll swap in our placeholder ring and receive our actual ring alongside everyone else! As it stands, Iām pretty used to wearing chunky rings, but the Brass Rat carries a different weight to it altogether. I guess the knowledge that donning one means Iām joining the ranks of decades-worth of Brass-Rat-wielding MIT students gives it a little extra heft.
ā life, with the brass rat by Kanokwan T. ā25
ā 2024 ring premiere! by Mel N. ā24
ā Ring Delivered by Kathleen E. ā23
ā Ring Delivery 2021 by Cami M. ā23
ā 2022 Ring Premiere by Shuli J. ā22, MEng ā23Ā
ā 7 Rings by Afeefah K. ā21Ā
ā Class of 2020 Ring Delivery by Danny and Allan G. ā20
ā Class of 2020 Ring Premiere! by Danny and Allan G. ā20
ā RecomMITed by Kevin S. ā19
ā Ringing in the second half of MIT by Anelise N. ā19
ā Spotted: A Brass Rat in the Wild? by Chris Peterson SM ā13Ā
ā Brass Rat 2017 by Erick P. ā17
(alternatively, just look up ābrass ratā on the admissions blog page and scroll in case i missed anything!! itās almost easier to explain the impact of the brass rat on the MIT undergrad experience by pointing you to all the times it gets mentioned in blogposts about nostalgia and aging and being an MIT student and whatever else.)
But first, what exactly is the biennial? From Wikipedia:
The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, United States. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932; the first biennial was in 1973. The Whitney show is generally regarded as one of the leading shows in the art world, often setting or leading trends in contemporary art. It helped bring artists like Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, and Jeff Koons to prominence.
Basically itās a big show that the Whitney puts on every two years, with a different overarching theme each time. Itās known for 1) focusing on American art, 2) showcasing less established artists, and 3) being overseen by primarily in-house curators (as opposed to inviting external ones). The Whitney has also been putting more focus on accessibility in recent years, in that theyāre trying to break down the pretentiousness and elitism that so often clouds the fine art world.
The 2024 theme is āEven Better than the Real Thing,ā alluding to questions of authenticity, identity, gender, nature, and AI. I personally feel like the theme didnāt have a particularly strong presence in the selection of works, but thatās really not a complaint. The show featured 71 artists and collectives, with many of them working in video, installation, and sculpture. It took me about four hours to get through all of the works on display, which spanned floors 1-6 of the museum. Here are some of my personal favorites, in no particular order!
PS sorry in advance for the terrible quality of the photos I took. all quotes are snipped from the museum description cards <3
(video piece; the still image below is from the Whitney website)
(video piece; the still image below is from the Whitney website)
(sound piece; listen to it on the Whitney website (scroll down))
ā…located in the stairwell, [created] entirely from vocal sounds that at times have an ambient effect and at other times offer a range of harmony, dissonance, and melodyā¦ the work meditates on the sensation of receiving information on multiple channels, as if the mind were switching stations on a radio.ā
Air I Breathe: Radio is close to an hour in length, but listeners will likely only hear it for a minute or two at a time as they move from floor to floor. I thought it was so cool that the experience of traveling through the show was also scored with audio like this, and the piece itself is so enthralling, especially as you descend or ascend around the speakers suspended in the spiral staircase.
Disclaimer that I am so far from knowledgeable about contemporary art, but I did really like the show for the most part. I felt like it captured the current climate of the USA quite wellāboth in a political/social sense and in a literal climate change sense. I particularly liked the work that spoke directly to a state of beingāin stasis, or peril, or temporalityāespecially Staffās installation and Fanās sculptures. And I stood for an entire hour until the pads of my feet were aching, absorbed into Nguyenās 67-minute length film.
I donāt really have a benchmark to base my thoughts off of, as Iāve never been to a biennial or wide-ranging curated show like this, but I was pretty surprised by how many video-based artists there were (as opposed to painters). There were also a couple large-scale pieces located on outdoor terraces, but I had checked my winter jacket, so I only stayed outside for a few seconds to take them ināenough for the bitter cold to sting my skinābefore slipping back inside. Besides the physical works on show, there are also many more films/ live performances associated with the exhibition that I didnāt get to see. I believe some of them will be viewable online at some point, and there are pictures of most of the static work online as well. But I would definitely recommend visiting in person, as everything is better when you see it in real life. One might sayāeven better than the real thing :)
]]>I blogged about some of the awesome chalk murals in Simmons last year, but many were erased over the past summer08 For unsavory reasons I will not get into . It was a sad day when we moved back in and saw they were gone, but now we have a whole new batch of murals, thanks to the talented artists living in Simmons! So here are some more pictures of awesome chalk murals from around the dorm.
Big thanks to everyone who sent me pictures for this post!
(Floor 6 is pretty overpowered in the art department)
]]>
Without further ado, here are 11 rooms:
Emily: i think i made my room too cozy this year because i just stay in it all day…. i love the way i have it set up. i especially love staring at my line of books on the windowsill i just think its so cute. sometimes people will just knock on my door (or not) and sit on my beanbag and hang out with me which is super fun. two people who are not me have slept in my bed this year lol. shoutout list for doing slap because the framed art really pulls together the room decor and makes me feel like an adult
our room is decorated with posters and trinkets we’ve each gathered over the past two years.
Nunu: my freshman year, i ended up on b1 by chance but i am so thankful i did. i’ve found life long friends from living here. mit is hard but having b1 and my two roommates as my support system honestly makes it so much fun. i love b1 so much!!!!!!!!!!
Aarushi: i’ve never had a room before that really feels like mine, because all the decor of my childhood bedroom is from when i was a child, and i never spent time decorating my room last year. the room isn’t even just mine, but ria and nunu make our room feel like home.
Ria: B1 is my home!! Every party, study break, or floor event just reaffirms my love for this floor and everyone on it. Our room is so cozy and well decorated and having the best roommates makes it the best living experience I could ask for.
Kyna: my room is infinitely sexy. so many people fit in my bed. I love boners!!!!!!!! but seriously, while I couldnāt find the energy to clean my room and take pictures, these are all pictures just from my life :) Iām so happy to have a room where me and my friends can be silly and hang out and play games. also projector and projector screen is mega cool!
Layla and Ronnie, two freshmen on floor, have collected so many cool things for their shared room! Featuring: the star light above Ronnie’s bed, which was a group room purchase to create more soft light. Also: the lamp on her desk, which she found in an antique shop while on a family road trip in Texas, and the necklace holder on the wall from a vintage shop in Boston!
I tried making my room nice this year! I love having all of my books unboxed and on display – even if I don’t have time to read many of them, I love the continuing habit of having them pile up. My tools have become so useful in B1; I’ve loaned out the hammer, pliers, and thimble in the last few weeks (Sofia and Val have tools to share as well).
“Noooo don’t take a picture it’s too messy” ~Selena
(poster edited because the blogs are not supposed to be political. b1 however is very supportive of political action for those who choose to engage, and we have members in lots of awesome action-oriented clubs!)
Otherwise known as Taylor and Angela
Our very own blogger AND GRA!! Paolo runs the wackiest, awesomest events. This one involved putting tape on objects around their apartment, drawing on the tape, adding labels to random objects, and eating lots of fruit!
And that’s a wrap! I personally have been wowed by peoples’ creativity and art as I’ve uploaded these pictures — I hope y’all were, too.
Have fun decorating your own rooms next year, wherever you go. And if you’re coming to MIT this CPW, come check out B1! :D
]]>I want to share with you some pictures and videos from one of the events. Project Manus,11 ive been mentoring for them for most of my time at mit and have really loved it! the easiest way into the MIT makersystem, hosted an event where makerspace mentors welded on digits of pi to a steel apparatus. This project has been in progress since 2019. Over 140 students contributed by spot and arc welding 850 digits of pi.
Video Source: MIT Instagram
Video Source: MIT Instagram
We may be running this as an event during CPW (Campus Preview Weekend) where anyone can learn to spot weld 5 digits of pi, and mentors/staff can arc weld them into the sculpture… still figuring that out.
Almost to 1000 digits!
]]>Pirates
This semester Iām taking 4 classes: 8.0212 Physics 2 , 18.0213 Calculus 2 , 2.S0214 Tool Design, a replacement MechE class for 2.00B, Toy Design, which didn't runt his semester. , and 21M.299. The last one is a world music studies class about āPirate Songs and Whaling Chanteys.ā and itās AWESOME.Ā
How the class works is we read a book by some salty New-England sea dog from the 60s, then we talk about it, and then we sing Sea Chanties15 The spelling of this word is a complex thing. There's a chicken-or-the-egg thing with whether the word chanty or chantyman (person who leads the chanties) came first, but the original spelling was chanty, and was later changed to be shanty by pop culture. When I say CHantey, I mean a historical chantey from the historical era, and when I say SHanty, I mean the broader definition of any sea song for the last third of class. Itās great. Iām learning so much about sea songs, and sailors and pirates andā
Itās all fake. Pirates Shanties arenāt real. Youāve been lied to.Ā
The Golden Age of Piracy was from 1650-1739, and the Chanties as we know them didn’t really flourish until the 19th century aboard large shipping vessels. So if pirates sang, it wasn’t the sea chanties we know of, and it wasn’t like Captain Hook and Mr. Smee. Also, most of the shanties people typically know of aren’t even real shanties. A “Historical Chantey” was a work song sung to coordinate a heaving task (like spinning the capstan to raise an anchor) or hauling task (like raising the sails). Modern day shanties, like Wellerman or Hoist the Colors are not work songs, but instead just “maritime music” that often gets associated with shanties because the definition is very loose. But I digress, I will write a pirate blog at some point.
Our class has been planning for weeks to do a Chantey sing at MIT, and on 3/13 we did just that. We made posters and hung them up around campus, and from 2-3:30, we sang in Lobby 7.Ā
It’s like a DLC to the MIT Pirate Certificate. My favorite Chanteys [although they are technically maritime songs, not sea chanties] so far have been The Mary Ellen Carter, Crossing the Bar, and Too Funk For the Folkies .
Pi
MIT goes HARD for Pi day. The Alumni Association has been sending emails (that i donāt think i ever readā¦) for weeks about an event in lobby 10. Thursday I saw what they meant.Ā
They were doing a contest to see who could recite the most digits of pi, and the highest score was my friend Nina O., ā27 with 345 digits (!!!) Good job Nina!
They also had a claw machine, with pi day merch inside. I wanted to play, but unfortunately the line stretched the entire length of the lobby. Then I did something Iām not proud of.Ā
A man from the alumni group announced that if you donated 5 dollars you could skip the line. The actual thought that went through my head was āFree Will Friday,ā and I blurted out that I would do it. I wanted a t shirt! So I donated 5 dollars, and that meant I could skip the line.Ā
Then I realized I would actually have to skip the line. Of like, 80 people. I felt awful. The guy told me to just go up there and play, but I didnāt even want to do it anymore. These people had waited so long and I just paid 5 dollars to skip all of them. I apologized profusely for taking advantage of this blatant scam for donations, before I lost 3 tries in a row and high tailed it out of there.Ā
I am deeply ashamed of this.Ā
Rats
There are no rats in this story.Ā
Pie
Every dining hall and their grandmaās house was serving pie on pi day. Whether it be pizza pie or real pie, everyone was getting a piece. Even Alan Z., who got pied in the face at Next House.Ā
When I made it back to Simmons, I got late night food and (surprise surprise), there was pizza pie. Let me say, though, that this was the single greatest pizza I had eaten this semester. Most Boston Pizza is floppy, and Iāve yet to find a place with good pizza structure and firmness. Idk, New England Pizza just isnāt hitting as hard as what you could get from say a ā¦Midwest Pizzeria. But thatās a story for another time.Ā
Rats
Well, I guess there are some rats in the story.Ā
I didnāt realize until recently that the phrase āAw, Rats!ā wasnāt a common one. Iāve been saying it for years, and recently that people seemed to think it was odd. One of my friends said it was a very Kentucky thing to say.Ā
I thought about it and I think that I got the phrase from my mom. I donāt have any distinct memories of her saying it, but I feel like itās something she would say. Or maybe I just got it from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.Ā
Maybe the Real Rats Were the Friends We Made Along the Way
I guess another big thing that happened this week was on Wednesday. I was coming back from a blogger meeting where we talked about blogs and things and i made a shameless plug for *ahem* Midwest Pizzeria, and I realized that it had been a full year since last Pi Day. I had grown so much, and learned more about pirates than I ever thought I would. But the icing on the cake was after I had left.Ā
I was walking in the outfinite16 it's like the infinite hallway...but outside. because it was finally warm, when I saw my fellow Kentucky friend, Kaleb T. ā27, down the ways a little bit. He was longboarding with a can of soda in each hand. When he saw me he shouted,Ā
āWhich one do you want?āĀ
I laughed and told him that I was ok.
āNo, youāre taking one,ā he said and he thrusted them towards me as he got closer. I reached out and grabbed the Canada Dry in his left hand as he skated away. I couldnāt help but laugh out loud.Ā
Kaleb had grown. I remember meeting him at the KY student meetup and he seemed almost hesitant about coming to MIT and leaving KY behind, but look at him now! Giving soda to people in the street! If he could grow then so can I, and so had I. It was the first time since getting here that I didnāt just think that I belong here, but that a part of MIT belongs to me, too.Ā
]]>there are some key differences in academics between MIT and here. firstly, people mostly take classes in only their own major. i had the choice to take one class outside my major but decided to stick to math classes only. it was a little intimidating at first, i have never taken only math classes or, as many math classes in the same semester.
the other difference is that there is more room for a self-guided pace. concretely, this means that my classes all have weekly problem sheets or tutorials, which look like problem sets, but we do not have to turn them in every week. instead, there are only one or two courseworks you actually have to submit for each class in the entire term. this is because a lot of your grade is the final exam at the end of the term (in the summer term, technically).
perhaps, a direct impact of having less coursework is less opportunities for collaboration. i might be biased because i don’t know as many people here but i don’t think it is just that.
here are some thoughts on the classes i am taking.
I. Functional Analysis
i originally signed up for this class mostly because the pure math major requires you to take a second analysis class beyond real analysis and i had not fulfilled that requirement yet. in hindsight, it was a really good decision! the professor for this class is a really, really good lecturer so the lectures are very interesting. i am also gaining a new appreciation for analysis. i took real analysis when i was but a confused freshman and so, i never really liked analysis before.
one way to think about dimension is to see how many variables it takes to describe a space. for example, in order to describe any point in the real plane, you can give its x and y coordinate so it is 2 dimensional. we look at finite dimensional spaces in linear algebra courses. roughly speaking, functional analysis is an extension of linear algebra to infinite dimensions where unintuitive things begin to happen. an example of an infinite dimensional space would be the space of polynomials with real coefficients. you would have to give the coefficients of {1, x, x^2, x^3, …} to describe any polynomial, which is an infinite number of variables. (Paige B. ’24 talks about dimensions here and helped me exposit this!)
the course revolves around the properties of complete spaces (which means spaces in which sequences for which subsequent elements eventually get arbitrarily close (Cauchy) have limit points (convergent). think holes. so an example of a not-complete space would be rational numbers. i could take a sequence of rational numbers approaching an irrational number and then, there would be no limit point for this sequence in the rational numbers.)Ā
we talk about linear operators that are continuous, or equivalently, bounded, and their various properties including extending maps from linear subspaces and talk about various notions for convergence using these linear operators.Ā
II. Statistical Theory
i wanted to take more probability and statistics classes, having enjoyed the one introductory course i took in the past and since this is, in some sense, the equivalent of the course people at MIT often take after the introductory probability course, i decided to go for it.Ā
my class started by introducing exponential families (families of statistical models that behave nicely) and then went on to talk about various ways of estimation. essentially, one wants to infer something about the true distribution of the data from the given samples and there are different ways to do this. we talk about the frequentist and the Bayesian way of thinking about statistics. the frequentist way treats the parameter we are looking for as a constant whereas the Bayesian way involves having some prior beliefs or knowledge about the unknown parameter, represented through a distribution (called the prior), and then adjusting your views or beliefs after looking at the data to a new distribution (called the posterior) on the parameter.
III. Geometry of Curves & Surfaces
i have really wanted to take a course in geometry for a while now. the first, shorter part of the course talks about regular curves, their tangent vectors and their curvature. the second part of the course defines regular surfaces and then defines their tangent spaces and the notions of curvatures for surfaces. regular surfaces are “nice” spaces that locally look like the Euclidean plane.
we learned how to take differentials on arbitrary surfaces. because the tangent vectors at a point in a surface are given by derivatives of curves lying on the surface passing through that point, then the differential of a map at a point is defined between the tangent spaces of the two surfaces that the map is defined on.
we talk about the intrinsic and extrinsic notions for curves and surfaces. one can think of these as what someone living on the curve (or surface) would experience versus what someone who is looking at it from the outside knows. think about this example: if you are living on a curve, you will not be able to distinguish between a straight curve versus a very “curvy” curve i.e., all curves are intrinsically flat. this is why we only talk about the extrinsic notion of curvature for curves. another example could be (from The Shape of Space): take a sheet of paper and compare it to if you bent it into a half-cylinder-like shape. if you are a little being living on this sheet of paper, you cannot tell the difference between the two (intrinsic) but if you are looking at the paper in 3-D, you can tell the difference between the two surfaces (extrinsic). so we have extrinsic and intrinsic notions of curvature for surfaces.Ā (may talk about curvature in a later blogpost!)
IV. Mathematical Foundations of Machine LearningĀ
given that the class is with the maths department and is literally called “mathematical foundations,” i should have expected it to be theoretical. and yet.
the class defines learning, goes into theoretical explanations for convergence of different optimization methods etc. we talked about neural networks, gaussian processes, convolutional neural networks and are now talking about variational auto-encoders. i am just throwing words at this point, but the only funny thing out of all of this is seeing KL divergence in class last week (sponsored by my friend, matthew).
this course is different from the other courses because it is coursework only. we had our first coursework due a couple weeks ago and it was ~65% theory and ~35% coding although i still struggled with the coding a lot more. in addition to being bad at it, i just did not like the whole try different things, wait for an eternity for your code to run, then try more things. i was able to get guidance from the TAs though, which was really helpful!
i am glad to have chosen this class because machine learning feels so interdisciplinary. i saw someone’s dissertation on a category-theoretic approach to deep learning (which i have not actually gone through but would like to). apparently, people tried to use ML models for topology to see if they could find useful patterns and invariants of spaces and apparently, they did find some stuff. this is also not something i know very well but i would like to learn more about it at some point!
i had been scared at the thought of graduate school and doing only math because i have had at least one HASS every semester at MIT, but this semester has made me more confident that it will be fun! four years seem like such a long time but almost three years in, i feel like there is so much more i want to learn that i just have not had time for. so, although it feels so scary to think about graduate school, i am also very excited to be able to learn a lot more.
i had also been scared of completely forsaking writing poetry if i was not required, for one reason or another, to write it but that has also not been true and it is very reassuring to know that.
ending on this forever relevant meme:
(thanks to Matthew H. ’25, Misheel O. ’25 and Paige for comments and ensuring correctness!)
]]>This year ā inclusive of both Early and Regular Action ā 28,232 students applied to join the MIT Class of 2028. As of (checks watch) right now, we have offered admission to 1,275 students who will have the chance to collectively climb the mountain that is MIT. They hail from all 50 states, 58 countries, and nearly a thousand different high schools. Though their interests and aptitudes range widely ā biomimetics and basketball, metallurgy and merengue, oceanography and orienteering ā they are united by a shared standard of rigorous academics, high character, and a strong match with MITās mission to use science, technology, and other areas of scholarship to work wisely, creatively, and effectively for the betterment of humankind. We canāt wait to welcome them to our campus to join the outstanding undergraduates who already call MIT home.
There are also students who may be climbing other mountains, with other fellow mountaineers, next fall. Of the students to whom we do not offer admission today, we have placed a modest number on our waitlist and informed the balance that we will not be able to admit them to the Class of 2028. Getting to āmeetā so many capable, compassionate students through this process has, as always, left us bleary-eyed and reminded us that what we do is more than a job: it is a privilege and an honor. We are grateful to have walked this short part of your path with you.Ā
If you are among the many stellar students to whom we are not offering admission, then I want to remind you success is not always a straight line. Your future isnāt something MIT creates for you, itās something you manifest for yourself. And if you spend the next few years trying to make wherever you are as amazing as you can (as you already are), then someday youāll look back on this Pi Day and realize it all worked out okay.ā
Iām closing comments on this blog post to concentrate conversation in the open threads for those admitted, waitlisted, and not admitted, respectively. Answers to frequently asked questions for waitlisted students can be found here, with more information about next steps to come in early April.
Congratulations to the Class of 2028, and best wishes to all of our applicants. No matter where you enroll next fall, please make it a better place. I know you can. I hope you will.
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Come celebrate with us in the comments andāmore importantlyāshare this wonderful news with your community and loved ones! We hope you feel like you’re walking on sunshine, and we’ll have some additional, cylindricalĀ information for you soon.
]]>Waiting has a reputation for being stagnant or tense or squandered time, but it can also be full of unexpected growth. We adapt and continue onward.
Some of you may feel happy to be waitlisted. Some of you may feel sad. Some of you may haveĀ complicated feelings; thatās okay too, and this is an open forum to talk it out. For right now, we just ask that you give it timeĀ and haveĀ a little patience.