Michael Freedman is a mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1986 for his solution of the 4-dimensional Poincare conjecture. Mike has also received numerous other awards for his scientific contributions including a MacArthur Fellowship and the National Medal of Science. In 1997, Mike joined Microsoft Research and in 2005 became the director of … Continue reading Michael Freedman | A Fields Medalist Panorama
Understanding Transformers via N-Gram Statistics
I released a preprint of my paper Understanding Transformers via N-Gram Statistics last Friday, which provides insights into the ways in which LLM behavior can be described in terms of simple statistical rules. I wrote a detailed X thread summarizing the paper, so I don't have anything else to add to that for now. I'm … Continue reading Understanding Transformers via N-Gram Statistics
Is mathematical rigour key to scientific certainty?
The Institute for Arts and Ideas had reached out to me awhile back to write an article on gauge theory which ended up morphing into an article on mathematical rigor and quantum field theory. This was a topic I spent a lot of my time thinking about during my postdoc years in academia (not so … Continue reading Is mathematical rigour key to scientific certainty?
Timothy Nguyen 