Marko

Machine Learning/AI Engineer and Yale Graduate, looking to teach younger kids Mathematics and Programming. English and Mandarin Chinese.

I generally take the approach of trying to get students to critically examine the problems they are dealing with, to ask the correct questions, and to figure out solutions themselves. I simply serve as a guide, ensuring that they stay on the right track. I use my academic and professional experience to construct useful analogies and lesson plans that suit their specific needs, and I ask them the right questions to get them thinking about the problems and the bigger picture.

Although I've had success in both research and development in Machine Learning and AI, I find myself drawn to teaching for two reasons. (1) I enjoy it and seem to be pretty decent at it, and more importantly, (2) I fundamentally believe that any society that wishes to avoid collapse must concern itself with the generational transfer of knowledge. Every decline of civilization has been caused, in part, by a decline in the knowledge and skills of successive generations. Clearly education is among the most important pursuits in our world -- not only is it required just to maintain the status-quo, but it is also required in order to solve the problems of our times, to produce meaningful art, science, and technology, and to progress.

Having interviewed many job applicants with stellar grades out of university, I find it somewhat disappointing that they are often still very far behind understanding what they need to understand in order to become successful engineers. This indicates that our current education system isn't really working too well, and I'd like to play my part in rectifying that as much as possible, by giving the kids I come across some much needed problem-solving skills and confidence in mathematical and programmatic thinking. I aim to teach fundamental, systematic knowledge that doesn't change over time, rather than teach frivolous flavor-of-the-week paradigms and trivialities, as is popular these days. I care not for credentials -- I care for skills, critical thinking, and potential to work on long-term projects that can actually impact the world for the better.