About
Hello, and welcome to my website.
I am a Ph.D. candidate in Applied Mathematics and Statistics on the Statistics Track at Stony Brook University, with an expected graduation date of May 2027. My research interests include reinforcement learning, statistical modeling, simulation, and sequential decision-making.
Before beginning the Ph.D., I earned an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and Statistics at Stony Brook, where I completed the academic requirements for both the Statistics and Operations Research tracks. I also earned advanced graduate certificates in Operations Research and Data & Computational Science. My undergraduate degree is a B.S. in Mathematics on the Theoretical Track from The Ohio State University, with minors in Computer Information Science and Economics.
I enjoy work that connects mathematical reasoning, statistical evidence, and computation. I also think of myself as a “forever student”: someone who likes learning new ideas, returning to old ones with a better perspective, and noticing connections across fields.
My academic journey
The course pages on this site are intentionally more complete than a résumé or CV. They are not meant to claim that every course is equally important to every visitor. They are my personal record of the subjects, teachers, books, and stages of learning that helped me grow from an undergraduate mathematics student into a statistics Ph.D. candidate.
Why “Kai’s Square”?
The chi-square distribution, written \(\chi^2\), appears throughout statistical inference. Friends and I noticed that the English pronunciation of chi sounds like my first name, Kai. “Kai’s Square” grew from that small coincidence and became a fitting name for the website of a statistics student.
The joke is informal, but the idea behind it is serious: statistics has become part of how I understand problems, evidence, and uncertainty.
Beyond the formal record
My Personal Notes page holds photographs, a few memories, and a collection of principles, puzzles, and paradoxes that I enjoy. It is the deliberately less formal part of this website.