Tien Chih

Hi followers! I'm Tien Chih and I'm an Assist. Prof of Math at Oxford College of Emory. My research is about the intersections of homotopy theory and combinatorics. Just as importantly, things I'm into are undergrad research, IBL, alt grading, and supporting math teaching with tech.

it feels truly insane that it’s not

Another year, another @sophie.huiberts.me video I need to share with students.

New video is up! Why is the simplex method so fast? At STOC'26 we presented the best theory yet

This is beyond pathetic. Assignments like this are meant to prompt the child into doing some rudimentary self-examination and reflection. Passing off to a parent defeats the point, passing off to a machine REALLY defeats the point. Also, how do you not know three things about your kid?

This. And if most Americans weren't aware of this in 2019, I'd guess they're even less so now. Public university students were paying for a third of the cost of their education in 2009, and it was up to half by 2019. 2009 wasn't great compared to the 60s-70s, either. www.pbs.org/newshour/edu...

I wish more people understood that every minute they spend engaging with AI slop papers is time they could instead spend reading a junior colleague's paper and offering feedback and guidance, or time they could spend with their students helping them see the joy and beauty of math.

We are hiring a tenure-track assistant professor in computational biology at USC! area: AI method development and its applications in biology. Do you combine quantitative research with a drive to develop innovative approaches for tackling biological questions? usccareers.usc.edu/job/los-ange...

Prints available in my shop of this one from last year. The perfect Christmas gift for the philosophically-inclined office wall . Limited edition, numbered and signed giclee art print - link to shop in bio. #philosophy

AI firms want you to believe their fraud bot is alive so they won’t be held responsible for the fraud bot’s crimes. But there is no gray area here, they hold the on/off switches in their very human, very prosecutable hands.

Hey I gave a talk and you can watch it here! vimeo.com/1238088888?f...

whoever did the cover of this?!?

Those of you who are old-school enough may remember #TMWYF during pandemic times, where I first learned of @visualalgebra.bsky.social's project! www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHZI...

New paper day! 🥳 🧮 Pontryagin-Thom, π₀ of the motivic sphere spectrum, and principal quadratic forms arxiv.org/abs/2610.29065 wherein I provide a novel proof of Morel's theorem identifying π₀(𝕊ₖ) with the Grothendieck-Witt ring GW(k) of quadratic forms.

New paper by our friend @e-infinity.space

My guy, if YOU’RE not going to read your paper, I’M not going to read it.

University of Washington is hiring: Assistant Professor in Mathematics #assistantprofessor #mathsky

Does anyone here know details about Allen Institute AI models? They at least claim to be aiming for transparency in their data training and to be concerned about environmental impacts, but I don’t know how much that is real vs washing (greenwashing, ethics washing, etc)

💥 Some personal news 💥 Visual Algebra is finally DONE! I just sent off an 820-page pdf to the editor. Almost exactly 7 years after I started. The zip file that contains the 100+ plain text LaTeX files and nothing else is a whopping 5.4 MB. Now onward to Volume 2! #MathSky

This but for proofs. In years past I felt this way also but about Chegg.

In the interest of closing some terrifying gaps in my budget I am selling this piece, the limit does not exist, for $125 plus shipping

University of Colorado Boulder is hiring: Assistant Professor in Mathematics (Open Area) #assistantprofessor #mathsky

That’s me!

You can't "solve math" because it's not a list of problems to be solved. It's a web of ideas to wonder about.

Please, alt-right dorks, I am begging you, just one history book. Just open it. Maybe you will learn something by osmosis.

Colonisation mindset: destroy all other cultures

By dumping 300 cherries on the ground, 50 of which are just muddy rocks and another 50 are wormy, you're not advancing science. You're just depriving people of ways to authentify their hypotheses as reliable, AND of the joy of putting a pretty fruit on a cake. You're setting science back decades.

U. Colorado Boulder Mathematics is hiring for two tenure-track faculty positions: 1 open area jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta... due Nov 15 1 at the interface of AI + math jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta... due Nov 11 Please help spread the word! #MathSky #AcademicSky

This is the most predictable thing ever in human history.

Considering doing a round of "Civics 101 for US Mathematicians" LinkedIn Learning videos or something. Like, what is The Federal Register and how do you use it; USASpending in a nutshell, etc. What aspect of the federal government do you want explained by a mathematician for you, a mathematician?

Short thread asking @nytimes.com and other MSM to stop interviewing the same small handful of people every time something math-related comes up. Mathematicians are dismayed when AI scoops them on the results? How about look for advice from someone familiar with getting scooped and outpowered.

“In centuries past, scientists and mathematicians were limited in their ability to solve problems by their ability to understand the solutions. This bottleneck has been removed, and now there is no theoretical limit to the amount of scientific and mathematical factoids we can fail to understand.”

Excited to announce labs.pretext.plus — a home for bleeding edge (read: very untested but hopefully useful!) tools to help STEM OER authors. Our first tool: an interactive PreTeXt <exercise/> authoring widget!

Join @clontz.org @davidwfarmer.bsky.social @oscarlevin.com tomorrow at 12E via mathtech.org/dropin/ for a workshop on interactive exercises via pretext.plus!

If you've been wanting to buy some @hanusadesign.com Mathematical Jewelry, you've got less than two months before the shop closes.

Glad to see this issue finally out! Lots of good stuff in here, including two TBIL articles

Back in 2021, I led the PCMI Undergraduate Faculty Program (abbreviated and online — covid times). Just today, four of the participants posted a preprint that arose from that program characterizing which quadratic forms of small rank arise as 𝔸¹-Milnor numbers! arxiv.org/abs/2610.14506 🧮

Someone shared this book and I feel like there are definitely some people among my followers who would enjoy this

We had an event at Oxford where faculty and staff brought their pets for students to hang out with. Schoo, photographer got this shot.

Tried making apple cider muffins.

MEET David Austin! 🥰 youtu.be/SAwtU5wxdLM?... (Alt text: this is an image of David Austin holding the Meet a Mathematician sign)

We think we have a non-brute force proof that the original Legend of Zelda can never be soft locked by spending keys in the wrong order. (!!) Guess we should shop for a recreational math journal. Any recommendations?