About me

Hi! I’m Alexander Wang. I’m a final-year mathematics student at the University of Cambridge. My degree covers a mix of pure and applied mathematics: I’ve particularly enjoyed courses in statistics, machine learning, and optimisation, as well as algebra courses such as number fields and Galois theory.

My main research interest is in interpretable machine learning, particularly concept-based models that explain their predictions using human-understandable concepts. I spent last summer at the Department of Computer Science at Cambridge working on this with Prof. Jamnik and Dr Zarlenga, building new architectures for spatial concept localisation and interactive tools for concept interventions. I think the question of how to make powerful models genuinely transparent is one of the most important open problems in ML, and concept-based approaches are an especially natural angle of attack.

More broadly I’m drawn to anything involving the use of mathematics for predictive modelling. I was previously a quantitative research intern at Huatai-PineBridge, researching alpha signals and approaches to risk modelling, and before that I worked on numerical flood modelling at Mott MacDonald.

I’ve been interested in mathematics for as long as I can remember. I spent my school years solving olympiad problems, and attended the PROMYS programme at Oxford, which was where I first got a taste for open-ended mathematical research.

I spend my free time travelling and taking photos, something I fell in love with whilst at university. I love to host dinner parties and cook for friends. Recently, I’ve been getting back into badminton (please reach out if you’d like to play!).

About this blog

I like understanding things from first principles, and I’ve found that writing is usually the best way to figure out whether I actually do. This blog is where I work through ideas I want to understand better: proofs, explanations, implementations, and the occasional half-baked thought.

My posts are written primarily for myself as a future reference, though I hope they’re useful to others too. Much of the writing is exploratory in spirit, my aim is to build intuition for difficult ideas, not to present a definitive treatment.

I also use this space to share a little more about my personal life from time to time, especially about travel, photography, and other interests outside academic work.

Please feel free to email me with any corrections or comments.