Other Interests & Projects
A few things I do outside of math.
City Streets
I am interested in how much one can learn about a city just by looking at its streets. The starting point is Geoff Boeing’s work on urban street network orientation, which measures how close a city is to a grid by the entropy of the distribution of its roads. I thought it might be nice to extend this to another dimension and look at the distribution of street angles on \(\mathbb{RP}^2\). There are also several other measures in there such as hilliness, walkability, and staircases. Check out the interactive dashboard here.
Leatherwork
I make small goods out of vegetable-tanned leather, mostly wallets and belts, cutting and saddle-stitching each piece by hand. One of the things I like about being in Chicago is that the Horween Leather Company is here.
Boots
I like wearing leather boots :) Leather molds to your feet, breathes well, is very durable, and ages beautifully (you should try it). Every year, Stitchdown hosts the Patina Thunderdome, a six-month contest in which entrants wear and care for a pair of boots, which are then judged on how they age. I placed first in the 2025/26 Pre-Worn Thunderdome.
