Hello! My name is 蔡醒诗 or Xing Shi Cai in English.
(See here if you want to know how to say my name.)
Welcome to my new home on the Internet! (Here is my old home.)
I am a mathematician/computer scientist who is interested in probability, combinatorics,
experimental mathematics and programming.
In recent years I also got interested in applying AI to research and teaching.
Recently, I moved Kunshan, China for a position of
Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Duke Kunshan University.
My uncle Mike (Michael J O’Connor) passed away this week.
I have only met Mike once in person when I visited Atlanta a couple years ago. It was a brief visit, but Mike’s hospitality made me feel very welcomed. He took me for lunch at Whole Food and had a walk with me in a beautiful park. The morning when I was having breakfast with him at his home, he showed me deer in his backyard with the excitement of a child. That was one of my fondest memories.
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A Few Stories of My Grandma
This is a link post from my family memorial website.
A Night of Stories My grandma, Xin Zhao (赵欣), passed away on March 8, 2022, when she was 93 years old.
To tell the truth, despite her always being kind to me, I knew very little about her life as I was growing up. When I was in college, my grandpa passed away and my grandma relocated to the US. From that point on, we had fewer chances to meet.
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Counselor
About This Article ⚠️ This article discusses issues related to suicide.
If you have thoughts of suicide, please seek professional help immediately:
DKU Counseling Services Suicide Crisis Hotline List Resource Compilation | Free Psychological Counseling, Crisis Helplines, Psychiatric Hospital Appointment Services I came across an interview with Japanese monk Ittetsu Nemoto, who has dedicated his life to preventing suicide. Due to personal reasons, I’ve translated it into Chinese in the hope that it may help more people. The original article was published in the Spring of 2014 on tricycle.org, and the author, Winifred Bird, kindly granted permission for me to translate and share it here. See the translation here.
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On Suicide
⚠️
This article is about suicide. If you have suicidal thoughts, please seek help immediately from services such as
Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) of DKU US’s National Suicide Prevention chat or hotline UK’s Samaritan hotline Someone I know recently committed suicide. I was shocked, saddened, and confused. It is one thing to know that many people die of suicide each year around the world. It is another to be personally affected by it. So I read and thought a bit on this topic. Here are some resources which I found helpful for understanding suicide.
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What podcast am I listening to?
I have been staying at home and teaching online for nearly a month and half now. During this time, I picked up my old hobby of listening to podcasts. Don’t get me wrong. I never stopped listening to news. But recent global events made me feel that it is probably not a good idea to consume too much news. So I switched to listening to some more educational and entertaining podcasts. Here are what I am listening to.
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Writing an exam paper with Julia and Jupyter Lab
I just taught Linear Algebra, which means I need to give exams with a lot of questions about computations. I would like to have the numbers in this problems to be random, and I like to solve them with computers. (Sorry, students. Only you need to compute by hand. 😆)
I have tried to use Mathematica to do so. The math parts works well. But the typesetting of Mathematica looks quite ugly.
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Why I don't reply emails (Or effective use of edstem.org in teaching)
In the past two months when I taught Linear Algebra, I used the Q&A website Ed (edstem.org) to answer questions from students. My main motivation for using Ed is to avoid answering the same questions repeatedly. If a student post a question on Ed and I reply, everyone else can see my answers. This goal is mostly achieved. However, I also want to train students to write about mathematics formally, and to foster a sense of a community among students. These goals turned out to be a bit more difficult.
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On Making New Habits
I came across an interesting article A behavioral scientist’s advice for changing your life.
Here’s an excerpt
If you’re trying to develop a habit like working out regularly or writing each day, letting yourself have a little leeway is the way to make that habit stick.
If you know when you might procrastinate, impose a fine on your future self and commit to paying if you don’t follow through with your goals.
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On Procrastination
I procrastinate, a lot. And when I think about all the things I could have done had I not procrastinated so much, e.g., all the papers I could have written, I am really regretful 😢.
One of the books which I found very helpful is How to Beat Procrastination by Nils Salzgeber. Here are some tips from the book and some of my own thoughts. Hope it help you to not to have the same regret which I have.
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What Have I Done in 2021
In this year I moved from Sweden to Canada, and the back to Kunshan, China, where I started working at Duke Kunshan University. I also got a girlfriend recently. 😄 (2022 Update – The relationship didn’t last long. 😢)
Although occasionally I had a bit egg or diary products when there is no choice, this year I am still mostly a vegan. This has been one of the best decisions of my entire life.
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