I write to share interesting experiences and ideas. My world model is still a bit shallow but I try!
Hovering Over History: Scatterbrain thoughts on Innovation
In the race of the replicators [1], where success is measured by the speed of evolution, memes have recently outpaced genes. For most of history, the gene was the only replicator in the race until we arrived. It took us a while to warm up, but after we learned how to think in symbols, our…
Charging ahead
Assembling a battery pack for an electric racing car is all fun and games until cells start to spark, bolts start falling out, and you end up questioning your competence as an engineer! I had the opportunity to lead the assembly process from individual cells to a functioning battery pack powering a North American record-breaking…
The Random Forest Algorithm
” Where does a machine learning engineer go camping… ? ” Random Forest is a useful algorithm for solving classification problems in machine learning. In this post, I will try and explain my understanding of the basics of the algorithm and some of its potential applications. As the name suggests, a simple analogy to the…
Basics of Supervised Machine Learning
I recently completed a course on Supervised Machine Learning: Regression and Classification on Coursera, and in this post, I will try and summarize some of the concepts and interesting ideas. And no, this introduction was not written by chat GPT! Machine Learning has taken off in the past decade due to an increase in available…
Notes on Lithium-Ion batteries
Lithium-Ion Batteries are the bedrock of our transition to sustainable energy, and as we benefit from economies of scale the cost of battery has gone down drastically. In this post I try my best to dissect the basics of how a lithium-ion battery works and improve my own understanding in the process. A lithium-ion cell…
Kevin Systrom on work, life, and social networks
I recently listened to Lex Fridman’s podcast episode with Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom, it was great and had a few interesting ideas that I tried to interpret. 1. Pain is inevitable so find fun in what you are doing If you want to achieve anything great, you will have to go through a lot of…
Obsession and Autonomous Vehicles
I recently read a book called “Autonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car and how it will change the world” by Lawrence D. Burns, and there were a few key interesting parts of it that I would like to share that really reflect the obsession it takes to achieve something great. This is not…
Independent thinking and Curiosity
“Nobody can tell me what to think, but everybody has a lesson to teach me” – Lex Fridman I recently read a Paul Graham essay on independent thinking and that expanded my intellectual capital so bear with me. At a young age, we are inherently hungry to learn more about how things work, and we…
Akshat Jain 