Blog Posts
- Why America should not build Light Rail
Light rail (or LRT) is a type of transit which uses street-running, at-grade trains to transport passengers. It’s been seeing a growing surge of interest in American cities over the last few decades,...
- 8 Tips on How to Give a Great Research Presentation
I have a lot of experience watching bad presentations, starting right from elementary school, and going all the way through undergrad, in industry, and in my PhD. This is almost certainly true of ever...
- How to Pronounce Tamil (and Transliterate it using Python)
Recently, I started a mini-project to write a Python script for transliterating the Tamil Script, since I couldn't find a good one which already existed. [Transliteration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
- Learning Colloquial Tamil - Part 2
A few years ago, I wrote in a [blog post](/blog/learning-colloquial-tamil) that I would start working more on Tamil again, and while I was able to read through the Colloquial Tamil book and pick up so...
- Exploring the Effect of AI Assistance on Human Ethical Decisions
In 2022, I published my first ever, first-author publication as a PhD student — [How Does Predictive Information Affect Human Ethical Preferences?](/uploads/aies22_predictions.pdf), which was publishe...
- Notes on Curriculum Learning
One of my current research projects deals with applying elements of Curriculum Learning (CL) for designing real-world human learning curricula. In the last few weeks, I've read a number of CL papers,...
- Markdown Presentations in RevealJS
A few months ago, I started using [RevealJS](https://revealjs.com) to make presentations instead of Powerpoint. RevealJS is "an open-source HTML presentation framework", with the idea that you can wri...
- Thoughts on my first NeurIPS
Yesterday, I finished my first ever NeurIPS conference. It was a great experience, as I got to present some of my recent work and get feedback, meet friends from around the country, learn about awesom...
- Using GPUs and JupyterLab on the WashU RIS Cluster
**Note - This post is quite out of date, my current workflow is available at [https://github.com/saumikn/ris-quickstart](https://github.com/saumikn/ris-quickstart)** In this post, I'll give a step-by...
- Visualizing Airline Routes and Hubs
_You can jump straight to the interactive [visualization](https://saumikn.com/airlinemaps) here. Details on how I implemented this project are available in the [Github repo](https://github.com/saumikn...
- What Every Computer Science Major Should Know (to Get an Internship)
When a new student is starting their journey into the field of computer science, it can be hard to figure out which topics to learn first. In this post, I will give my opinionated review on what every...
- A Brief Guide to Maia
[](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.01855.pdf) Over the last few months, I've been working on a research project to develop personalized training tools for chess players. For this post, I'm just going to d...
- Predicting Move Times in Chess - Final Report
For this project, I analyzed methods to model the aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty of a neural network model for predicting the amount of time that a human player will use for a given move in a ch...
- Predicting Move Times in Chess - Status Update
For this project, I am comparing the abilities of Bayesian and non-Bayesian neural networks as a predictor for how much time a chess player will use to make their move in a certain chess position, ta...
- Predicting Move Times in Chess - Intro
During a chess game, players are constantly making decisions and evaluating the current state to increase their odds of winning. The process of analyzing positions is a problem that AI has already ac...
- Working Harder, not Smarter in Pacman
In my AI class this semester, we have a 3-part course project based on the [Berkeley CS118 Pacman Project](https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs188/archive/fa24/projects/). The first part of this projec...
- A Brief Guide to Stockfish NNUE
In my [last](/blog/guide-to-traditional-chess-engines) [two](/blog/a-brief-guide-to-neural-network-chess-engines) posts, I gave brief overviews to two of the more established paradigms for chess engin...
- A Brief Guide to Neural Network Chess Engines
Last week, I wrote an [article](/blog/guide-to-traditional-chess-engines) explaining the basics on traditional chess engines. Today, I will go over the new generation of chess engines, using neural ne...
- A Brief Guide to Traditional Chess Engines
Over the next few posts, I'll be writing a series on how chess engines work. This isn't intended to be an authoritative, in-depth guide on engines, but just a quick summary on the different types of c...
- Learning Colloquial Tamil - Part 1
**Update - July 20, 2023** I've written two more blog posts on the topic of Colloquial Tamil. The [first](/blog/learning-colloquial-tamil-2) is an update to this post with a few additional learning r...
- Using GridSearchCV in Scikit-Learn
For my final project in Data Mining, we were given a dataset, the [Wisconsin Breast Cancer Database](https://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/Breast+Cancer+Wisconsin+%28Original%29), and asked to apply...
- Rotation 2 Final Report
I In order to create a surgery schedule for a hospital’s operating rooms, the hospital must predict how long each surgery will take. However, surgery durations are not deterministic, and hospitals mus...
- Speeding up Machine Learning using Keras.evaluate() and Python Multiprocessing
My second research is coming to a close next week, and I've been running a lot of ML experiments so I can have interesting results for my final report. However, one of the things slowing down my itera...
- An Interactive Exercise Book to Learn Python Better
In the past, I've been asked by multiple people for recommendations on how to get started programming. However, when I looked online for courses, I honestly didn't find anything online that met my cri...
- Implementing Closed Form CPRS in Python
In my [review](/blog/paper-review-machine-learning-to-forecast-surgery-duration) of the paper [Probabilistic forecasting of surgical case duration using machine learning: model development and validat...
- Paper Review: Machine Learning to Forecast Surgery Duration
My second rotation has started on Monday, and I've decided to work with [Dr. Chenyang Lu](https://www.cse.wustl.edu/~lu/) in the area of Machine Learning for Health. During the rotation, I'm going to...
- Wrapping up Learning Chess Biases and Proposed Next Steps
Today is the final day of my first rotation with CJ and as part of the rotation requirements, I need to write a final report. In line with some of my other assignments, I've decided to complete this...
- Classifying Player Moves using Random Forests
Over the last week, I’ve mainly been expanding on my work from last week, with the dataset of moves represented as differences of [compressed chess board states](/blog/compressing-chess-states). In my...
- Paper Review: Learning Human Biases in IRL
In my Intro to Grad Studies class, we have been given an assignment to do an in-depth paper review for each of our rotations. I already [posted](/blog/biased-inverse-reinforcement-learning) a general...
- First Steps in Calculating Chess Player Biases
Last week, I went over some functions I created to compress a chess board state into a set of integers, based on the component functions created during the [Stockfish evaluation process](https://hxim....
- Compressing Chess Board States for Reinforcement Learning
Last week, I went over several papers in the area of Biased Inverse Reinforcement Learning and Fairness Criteria. I also brainstormed several possible next steps for research. After talking with CJ on...
- Papers on Biased Inverse Reinforcement Learning and Fairness Criteria
Unlike many other PhD programs, WashU has a special rotation program to facilitate student-advisor matching, where students do a 2-4 one-month research stints with professors so the students and profe...
- States Chess Cup - Round 7 Playoff Picture
It has been a very fun six weeks in the [States Chess Cup](https://new.uschess.org/news/2020-states-cup-underway). We've had a lot of great chess being played, with no shortage of upsets and nerve-wra...
- Modeling Network Formation in an Online Health Community
Over the last two weeks, I’ve written about my first two research projects and publications at GroupLens. Today, I’ll wrap up this series by talking about my third and final research project with the...
- Qualitative and Quantitative Methods for Cancer Journeys
Last week, I wrote about my first ever research project and publication, and I’ll continue this topic today by talking about my next project and publication at GroupLens. Actually, quite a lot of time...
- Building an NLP Death Classifier
This week, there were no really interesting topics that came up for me to write a blog about. Instead, I’ll start going through the dozens of post ideas in my backlog that I’ve been meaning to write a...
- Explaining Polynomial, Exponential, and Pseudo-Polynomial Algorithms
One of the classes I’m signed up for this semester is Advanced Algorithms. Already, this is shaping up to be one of my favorite classes and I think it’s really going to take my understanding of algos...
- Starting a Weekly Blog during my PhD
Tomorrow is my first day at Washington University in St. Louis, where I will be working towards a PhD in Computer Science! While I spend the next 4-6 years of my life here, I've decided to make a comm...
- Rating USCF Tournaments on Lichess.org
In the last three months, I've run twelve USCF rated tournaments online and many more unrated tournaments, as COVID-19 has put all of our OTB tournaments on hold. Our biggest event so far had over 20...
- Building a Complete aBRT System in Minneapolis
_This post has been republished from [https://streets.mn/2020/03/26/building-a-complete-abrt-system-in-minneapolis/](https://streets.mn/2020/03/26/building-a-complete-abrt-system-in-minneapolis/). Che...
- A Proposal to Double Express Bus Frequency Without Increasing Costs
This post has been republished from [Streets.mn](https://streets.mn/2019/10/21/a-proposal-to-double-express-bus-frequency-without-increasing-costs/). Check out the comment section here for reactions t...
- My thoughts on Kaggle Learn
After I graduated from college in May, I didn’t want to immediately start searching for jobs for two main reasons. The first was simply that I wanted to take a break, and do things that I wanted to f...
- Finding Missing Moves in a Chess Scoresheet
In competitive chess games, players must keep a score of the game as it is played. Notating a game like this is required for two reasons. The first is that it helps tournament officials manage player...
- Using Tableau to Visualize Light Rail Ridership in the Twin Cities
During my final semester at the University of Minnesota this spring, I took an Urban Studies colloquium on Urban Analytics. The course was taught by Andrew Dahl, a former Data Analyst for the City of...