I’ve recently come across two impressive Chinese articles on education and school choice: How Many Crossroads Does It Take to Go from the First Year of Primary School to a Top University (FDU or SJTU). Link Do Students Perform Better If They Are Admitted to Middle School by Lottery? Link These articles form a quasi-series studying Shanghai’s education ecosystem. The first examines factors influencing university enrollment—specifically at Shanghai’s top two universities, SJTU and FDU....

cat cat scooter As November draws to a close, here’s a photograph that brings a wink—a moment of two ginger friends’ …scooter seats—reminding us all to slow down and take in the view. To my friends and whoever come to this page, thank you for being in my life, and every bit of help really do keep me grounded while I navigate everything. Happy end of November and cheers to the holiday season ahead!...

We’ve covered the Royal Ballet’s midsummer special series celebrating Ashton’s legacy in previous blog posts: Les Rendezvous, the Dream and Rhapsody | Phenomenal Ballet Program Marianela Nunez in Les Rendezvous | a dance of sweet grace and precision To complement those reflections, here’s a perspective from The New York Times. (Six months ago) Roslyn Sulcas captured the essence of Ashton’s genius in a post: At the Royal Ballet, Taking the Measure of Ashton’s Genius Many remarkable performances fueled the Royal’s mini-festival of ballets by Frederick Ashton, the company’s founding choreographer....

The New York Times has outdone itself with a comprehensive guide to N.Y.C. Holiday events—ballet, opera, and philharmonic picks that will make you wish you were sipping hot cocoa under the Rockefeller tree already. First up, the pièce de résistance: The Nutcracker George Balanchine choreographed Nutcracker At Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater, the New York City Ballet will present its annual “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker” (Nov. 29-Jan. 4), with more than 125 children in two alternating casts from the School of American Ballet and a one-ton Christmas tree that grows to more than 40 feet tall....

Few moments in musical history are as electrifying as when Whitney Houston and Luciano Pavarotti shared the stage to perform the iconic “La Donna è Mobile” from Verdi’s Rigoletto. an unexpected duet Pavarotti sang with rich texture and commanded the stage. But Whitney suprised everyone with her master in opera-style singing. After her sustained high note, even Pavarotti responded with 🤌🏻—you can’t expect more admiration from the mastro of operatic tenor....

An example of MIT Sloan Shriram Krishnamurthi’s response on Quora succinctly explains why the “List other institutions” question isn’t particularly meaningful: I frankly find this a very silly question. It basically invites the candidate to guess why this is being asked and try to project an answer onto it that corresponds to that guess. Then the committee—if they read it at all—projects their guess on the candidate’s guess of their guess, and it becomes an extended game of epistemology....

Rusalka is undoubtedly Dvořák’s most celebrated opera. Like many operas, its fame largely stems from one iconic excerpt: the hauntingly beautiful “Song to the Moon.” This piece, with its ethereal melody, has been adapted in countless forms—including a harp version I found to be a soothing lullaby… A Story That Echoes Through Time Rusalka, like the mermaids or willies of folklore, embodies the tragic figure of a woman wronged by love—mournful, otherworldly, and sometimes vengeance towards mankind....

The biggest musical production of 2024 is out. Directed by Jon Chu, music by Stephem Schwartz and Holzman. Original broadway cast was Idina Menzel (center) and Kristin Chenoweth More information (and spoiler) can be found here at its Wikipedia. Check out its box office performance here. I will update its movie review later, after I submitted all of my applications…

This post follows up on the Online Bipartite Matching series, specifically building on the primal-dual techniques discussed in Part II. Recently, I attended a talk by Yiding Feng at SJTU that introduced a fascinating application of these techniques in a broader context, as detailed in their paper. Batching and Optimal Multi-stage Bipartite Allocations Yiding Feng and Rad Niazadeh In several applications of real-time matching of demand to supply in online marketplaces, the platform allows for some latency to batch the demand and improve the efficiency of the resulting matching....

China’s higher education system employs a unique postgraduate enrollment mechanism called “recommendation for postgraduate studies,” or “保研” (Bao-Yan) in Chinese. Due to its structure and timing, commitments between students and universities are often made and then broken, leading to a chaotic landscape of mutual defaults. This admission process has evolved into a disturbing game between students and admissions offices. Colloquially, students refer to the act of reneging on commitments as “鸽” (ge), meaning “to pigeon,” a playful nod to the widespread practice....