rahimnathwani

@[email protected]
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I've lived in San Francisco since 2019.

2010-2019 I lived in China.

Before that I lived in London, where I was born.

Some random stuff:

- English is my native language, but I also speak (to varying degrees of fluency) Mandarin, Gujarati and Spanish.

- My career so far has been a mix of startups/cofounding and big tech (I was a PM at Amazon and at Google).

- I'm a qualified accountant (CIMA), have two undergrad degrees and an MBA.

- I'm better at writing software than an average PM, and better at product management than an average software engineer :)

- You should use Anki

Email: rahim AT encona DOT com

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rahimnathwani
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Show threadrahimnathwaniJan 25

I was with you until the last sentence.

But I went to the ABCD Study web site, and read the article they link about ethical use of data (Responsible use of population neuroscience data: Towards standards of accountability and integrity).

I didn't get the impression that consent (for this study or future ones) is the reason they gatekeep the data.

rahimnathwaniJan 25

It seems weird for the government to collect data useful for research, but then to gate access based on the viewpoints of potential users. This restriction doesn't support the search for truth.

Whatever people think of Lasker (Cremieux) and his views, isn't data being available to all interested parties the best way to find the truth?

The article mentions this towards the very end:

Adam Candeub, the top lawyer at the Federal Communications Commission, wrote a law review article in 2024 criticizing the N.I.H.’s discouragement of stigmatizing research. He compared it to the persecution of Galileo.
“A liberal society should support the search for truth,” Mr. Candeub wrote, “regardless of how uncomfortable and unsettling that truth turns out to be.”

Show threadrahimnathwaniDec 6

at the very least in my state (Illinois), it's not lawful for public bodies to disclose the license plate numbers read from ALPR cameras, so this data set is necessarily incomplete

It's not a dataset of license plate numbers read from ALPR cameras. It's a dataset of license plate numbers that have been entered into search tools.

Enter a license plate to see if it's one of the 2,207,426 plates seen in the 27,177,268 Flock searches we know about.

Show threadrahimnathwaniOct 1

I usually regret reading Dan Meyer's articles, but this one I really enjoyed. It pointed at a couple of sources that led me down a rabbit hole back when I encountered it.

I don't know whether Dan Meyer is in favour of delaying math education. I do know he favours delivering education in a school setting with in-person human teachers, but the latter doesn't imply the former.

And he works on making really nice tools for exploring math: https://www.desmos.com/

Desmos | Beautiful free math.

Desmos Studio offers free graphing, scientific, 3d, and geometry calculators used globally. Access our tools, partner with us, or explore examples for inspiration.

Show threadrahimnathwaniOct 1, 2025

This is a good article. Dan Meyer, like his PhD supervisor Jo Boaler, is very much in the camp that traditional classroom education is good, and that improvements come by working through school districts, administrators and classroom teachers.

I'm not saying this to cast doubt on any of the facts in the article. Just pointing out that Dan, in general, has a less optimistic view of AI in education, than I'd expect of the median HN commenter.

That said, I'll share my thoughts on Alpha School, based on everything I've read (both things published by the school, and things I've read from parents online and in private forums):

- the '2x growth' in their marketing is way oversold; their typical 4th grader isn't doing math at the level of a typical 8th grader.[0]

- the '2 hours/day' in their marketing is oversold; students often work longer than that.

- only 25% of their students use Math Academy. The rest use IXL or ALEKS.

- in their charter school application, the amount they proposed charging for their software platform was unreasonable, given the minor role it plays in outcomes (10% according to Matt Bateman, who works there)
[1]

- the core idea of their 'timeback' platform (that monitors student activity in realtime via video camera and screen recording) is good, but I have not seen it and have no idea whether it's real or how good it is

More of my thoughts from back in April: https://x.com/RahimNathwani/status/1912571014107787730

[0] https://x.com/RahimNathwani/status/1971804784475996469

https://x.com/RahimNathwani/status/1971817857286803873

[1] https://x.com/RahimNathwani/status/1912586493086036148

Rahim Nathwani (@RahimNathwani) on X

@NielsHoven @mbateman @gtschool I love the *idea* of GT School and schedule. I'm skeptical about the current implementation. They use widespread tools like IXL. Their enthusiastic employees are unable to explain how their platform ensures students are working on the right things. https://t.co/H6y3nYkjUy

X (formerly Twitter)