The Art Institute of Chicago boasts one of the world’s finest collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. If you’re a frequent gallery visitor, one Monet won’t be too much of a surprise. But a walls of Monet’s Wheatstacks would still be impressive… The following is one of my favourite. One of Monet’s 25 Haystacks painting (1888-1891). Btw, really good short introduction for impressionism: The Triumph of Impressionism In the 1870s, a group of young artists, who would be known as the Impressionists, redefined what a painting should be....

I am at Chicago Booth’s PhD admits visit day. Professor Budish suggested a really useful advice in terms of how to choose where to go to “Go and read (thoroughly) the papers of the professors you want to work with at all places you want to go to. Then you’ll know.” Professor Pernoud gave a hint on being successful PhD student: don’t procrastinate, submit papers asap. Booth’s ‘winter garden’ And I ran into Emir Kamenica in the hallway....

Do Chinese people really drink that much milk tea? Mar 25 2025: Chinese tea chain Chagee filed for a U.S. initial public offering on Tuesday, seeking to trade on the Nasdaq using the ticker “CHA.” Since its founding in 2017, the company has grown to more than 6,400 teahouses across China, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, as of Dec. 31, according to a regulatory filing. Roughly 97% of its locations are in China....

Match Day happens on the third Friday in March (March 21, 2025, in this year’s case). On Monday of that week, students learn whether they’ve matched with a residency program but they don’t yet find out where they have matched. This Match status notification is sent by email at 10am ET on Monday. (Students who do not match by Monday may apply for supplemental offers that concludes on Thursday, the day prior to Match Day....

Facebook’s former Director of Public Policy Sarah Wynn-Williams published a memoir about her experience working at Facebook (Meta). The book is titled Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed and Lost Idealism. The book is officially published on March 11, 2025. On the day of the book’s publication, Meta filed an arbitration demand. Just a day later, the book is ‘banned’—arbitrator temporarily ordered Sarah not to make any “disparaging, critical or otherwise detrimental comments” related to Meta and to stop promoting the book....

Here are two interesting articles I came across, about the ballet choreographer George Balanchine: How Balanchine saw the music and heard the dance Tchaikovsky and Balanchine: Partners in Dance Balanchine’s choreography is great with musicality. His love for Tchaikovsky well explains this. (Note: Ballenchine borns 10 years after Tchaikovsky passed away). For Balanchine, the process of creating ballets to Tchaikovsky’s music was like learning from a beloved mentor. “Without Tchaikovsky’s help, I would not have managed… I’m not smart enough for it....

Pas de deux is a dance duet in which two (typically male + female) dancers perform ballet step together. A strictly classical balletic pas de deux follows a fixed pattern: a supported adagio, a solo male variation, a solo female variation, and the final flashy coda. The Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux is interesting for its music origin. The music is composed by Tchaikovsky, obviously. But actually it’s part of Swan Lake....

I’m TAing Discrete Math for Professor Nick Gravin this semester (2025 Spring). We’ve introduced extra problems—a set of challenging bonus questions that provides extra credits, meant for students who find the regular coursework too easy. The goal is to provide meaningful enrichment, but we’ve encountered a mechanism design problem: How do we structure rules and incentives so that students put in genuine effort, avoid academic dishonesty where they copy from each other to get scores, and maintain fairness in the grading process?...

Professor Shang-Hua Teng from USC is visiting our institute (ITCS@SUFE) today. A distinguished mathematician and theoretical computer scientist, Professor Teng shared valuable career insights during an open panel discussion. Later, he delivered a talk on his recent work, Regularization and Optimal Multiclass Learning, co-authored with Julian Asilis, Siddartha Devic, Shaddin Dughmi, and Vatsal Sharan, and presented at the Thirty-Seventh Conference on Learning Theory (COLT) 2024. Professor Teng and my advisor met at Tsinghua almost 20 years ago and remain close collaborators and friends since then....

At the end of my USC PhD open day visit, I went to Frank Lévy’s concert “An Hour With Rachmaninoff” at Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford. Professor Lévy commented on Rachmaninoff’s nostalgia. Rachmaninoff’s deep nostalgia was largely due to his forced exile from Russia after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Before the revolution, Rachmaninoff was already a major composer, pianist, and conductor in Russia. He had a beautiful estate called Ivanovka, where he composed much of his early music, surrounded by the rolling Russian countryside that he loved....