User:Bpchen

Brian Chen
Room	M307
Year	2019
Course	Mathematics with Computer Science

Hi. I'm Brian. I currently live in H302. I am from Taiwan but know an alarming number of other people on floorpi from AoPS. I like math, computer science, singing, puzzles, dragons, and lots of other stuff.

Ooh, an infobox! (My courses are only tentative; I have an open mind with regards to changing or dropping majors. But it looks cool!)

As of Fall 2015, I'm on HistoryComm with Steven which means I'm in charge of maintaining the wiki, among other stuff. I expect to be here for a while since PHP. Anyway... fill out your user pages, folks! (For people who like fancy things, Wikipedia's page on wiki markup is helpful.)

Classes

Fall 2015

• 5.111, Principles of Chemical Science: Well, it's a GIR. I liked the lectures and lecturers (van Voorhis, Shoulders); they kept the whole thing at least somewhat engaging. Other parts, like the online problems, were decidedly meh.
• 6.046J/18.410J, Design and Analysis of Algorithms: Coming from an extensive competitive programming background, I probably don't have any thoughts or opinions on this class that would be helpful to others.
• 8.022, Physics II (Electricity and Magnetism): The professor (Ashoori) is a cool guy and there are cool experiments, but the hardest parts of lecture consist of a sea of equations and it was hard for me to to see the forest for the trees often. On the other hand, my TA (Zwierlein) was super awesome.
• 17.309J/ESD.082J/STS.082J, Science, Technology, and Public Policy: A CI course I have to keep spelling out. It's pretty intense; there are a lot of readings, two 10--15-page essays, and a midterm and final from an essay pool. The reward is the professor (Oye) intersperses awesome stories to tell throughout his lectures. The guy really gets around and never runs out of relevant tales of how he met so-and-so powerful political figure on an airplane, or gave a presentation to a room full of company CEOs, or whatever. I'm quite glad I took it, but I'd say you shouldn't take it unless you're sure you're interested in the material.
• 18.A34, Math Problem Solving (aka "Putnam Seminar"): Well, we do what it sounds like, solve vaguely Putnamesque problems but with lots of other weird things on the side.

Spring 2015

• 6.01: To be generous, I learned about op-amps. The other stuff was routine. Don't go in without knowing Python; you'll struggle and it won't be your fault.
• 6.841J/18.405J: Complexity theory is amazing. Unfortunately Moshkovitz is leaving and I don't know how much useful information I can still give about this class.
• 18.702: I got it the semester Artin decided not to teach it, and it was taught by Negut, who was too fast for the first bit of the class, but slowed down soon enough. He also has an unfortunate stutter, but I would still say a decent lecturer.
• 21M.011: A nice CI class in that the papers are mostly about careful listening and giving an informed opinion, with minimal research. The listening quizzes can be hard, but if you like music this is pretty good. Pollock is a dedicated lecture and Neff is a fantastic section leader.
• 21M.301: 10/10 would take again. I was in Ruehr's section. The homework was very light, but I learned a lot and the final project, where you get to compose a short string quartet piece and hear it performed for you, is really cool. There's a piano lab and sight-singing lab, the latter of which was quite strict with attendance, but that's all.

Fall 2016

Tentative thoughts!

• 6.004: You can flexibly frontload lots of work. The design project is fun.
• 6.867: Kaelbling, Sra, ?. I don't get machine learning, it seems like you just throw lots of things onto a metaphorical table and jiggle it until you get something good. The tests are weirdly easy algebraic term-pushing. The projects are sort of interesting and really let you try and implement the concepts/algorithms (or call outside libraries to do them). Do make sure you know numpy or MATLAB; optimally, have a partner who knows the same system.
• 9.01: Bear, Lambo. Wow, all quizzes and tests, no p-sets. The lecturers are standard but do have a sense of humor. I'm fascinated by learning about my own brain.
• 18.217: Stanley. We just went over Enumerative Combinatorics. It's kind of slow, but I probably still didn't listen as much as I should have. Well, I like combinatorics...
• 6.854: With Karger and Madry. Decent lecturers but the p-sets are rapid and intense.

Not Classes

• I like puzzles. Remotely, I hunted with Random twice and wrote a hunt with them once before coming to MIT. Once here, I participated three puzzle hunts (Simmons REX hunt, aquarium hunt, Mark Halpin's 2015 Labor Day Extravaganza) before classes started. Throughout the year I hunt with floorpi on Australian hunts and the occasional smaller local hunt, and ✈✈✈Galactic Trendsetters✈✈✈ on Mystery Hunt.
• I like weird songs. I know the Pathery theme song (among many, many others) by heart.
• I did lots of mathematics and programming competitions in high school, and kept doing some of them here — Putnam, ACM-ICPC. But you might have already guessed that?

Here's a Triple Back (from my blog, prior example and rules from MellowMelon).