Teaching

I care a lot about teaching, both as a skill to develop and as an important human activity. I am lucky to have it as part of my job. I am generally interested in skills connected to teaching, such as psychology, metacognition, the skill of learning skills, communication, and mentorship.

My teaching style and philosophy owe mainly to two great teachers: my mother and Sanjoy Mahajan. However, much of what I learned is from talking to other people. If you can teach me about teaching, let me know – I would be grateful.

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University teaching history:

• SJSU:
  • (Fall 2018) Combinatorics (Math 142) and Mathematical Programming for Graduate Students (Math 285)
  • (Spring 2018) Graph Theory (Math 179), Cryptography (Math 196W), and honors Topics Course for the Computer Science Department (CS 150H).
  • (Fall 2017) Combinatorics (Math 142)
  • (Spring 2017) Discrete Mathematics (Math 42) and Graph Theory (Math 179).
  • (Fall 2016) Discrete Mathematics (Math 42) and Combinatorics (142).
• Berkeley:
  • (Fall 2015) Math 191 (Problem Solving) and Math 116 (Cryptography)
  • (Spring 2015) Math 172 (Combinatorics)
  • (Fall 2014) Math 116 (Cryptography) and Math 191 (Problem Solving Seminar).
  • (Spring 2013) Math 104 (introduction to analysis).
  • (Fall 2013) Math 113 (abstract algebra)
• MIT:
  • recitations (the second time as course administator) twice for 18.06 (Linear Algebra).
  • I was also head grader for 18.310 (Principles of Discrete Applied Math).
• Harvard:
  • sections for Math 25 (Honors Multivariable Calculus and Linear Algebra)
  • section for Math 192r (Algebraic Combinatorics)
  • section for Math 115 (Methods of Analysis).

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SPARC:

I am one of the co-organizers and instructors of SPARC, a different kind of summer camp for mathematically talented high school youth. I helped run it every summer in the period 2012 – 2018. I am now SPARC Director.

I was a SPARC “ambassador” and instructor at EuroSPARC 2016, a program inspired by SPARC.

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Other teaching-related activities:

• I was a mentor at the first two years of MIT PRIMES. Mentees: Ziv Scully (chip-firing) and Aaron Klein (adinkras, graded posets).
• I mentored for RSI after being a participant back in 2002 (wow I’m old). Mentees: Damien Jiang (chip-firing) and Martin Camacho (posets).
• For math olympiad problem solving, I was an instructor/grader at the 2006 Math Olympiad Summer Program (MOSP) and the 2010 IDEA Math program.