Hi, I'm Trang!

I'm a researcher, developer and writer. I build tools to help people get better at sense-making and making decisions under uncertainty.

My work is motivated by a desire to foster a culture in which we understand each other and the world better. I believe the best way to do that is to create better representations that give us a more immediate connection to the underlying phenomena.

I'm interested in finding hidden mechanisms—whether in mathematics, biology, AI (mechanistic interpretability), music, art, relationships or society—and in understanding how ideas go viral on the internet. The "Feminist Hacker Barbie" story is a good point to start.

A decade-old Barbie comic had been quietly sitting on bookshelves and in online archives for years. Then someone noticed a particularly absurd panel and posted it online. Within hours, thousands of people were looking at the same object. Nothing about the comic had changed. What changed was its position in the collective attention of the internet.

What's on my mind?

I write about mathematical culture: how mathematics is learned, practiced, communicated, and perceived.

Featured Series

Mathematics is more than definitions and proofs. It is also a culture with its own traditions, norms, misconceptions, and ways of learning. This ongoing series explores how mathematics is learned, practiced, communicated, and understood.