I've enjoyed writing ever since I first fumbled with that stubby red hexagonal pencil in kindergarten. I was a reporter and editor for the news section at The Daily Princetonian, Princeton University's college newspaper. After graduation, I've tried to keep writing. I published a series of articles in Forbes that described how to do a mathematical analysis of campaign speeches to predict the winner of presidential elections.

Selected Publications

Pratham Delhi
3 R's and an M by Akshar Narain
My brother worked with an organization called Pratham, which promotes literacy in India, to teach music to a number of students in Delhi. Within a couple weeks, his students went from never having touched a piano before to playing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star with their eyes closed.

The Daily Princetonian
Inside the Vault
A series of five articles analyzing the performance of Princeton's endowment during the 2008 financial crisis. This got a nod in the Wall Street Journal.

Forbes
How Mathematical Modeling of Speech Text Can Predict Presidential Election Outcomes
An article that describes the methodology of my senior thesis at Princeton, which showed that machine learning and a mathematical analysis of the text of presidential campaign speeches can lead to surprisingly accurate predictions about the outcomes of elections.

Speeches and Votes: How Obama's Words Point to Victory
This one talks about what happens when you apply the above technique to the 2012 presidential election. It successfully predicted Obama's victory and discusses the suggestions the model had for making Romney's speeches better. This was the first time I'd run the model during a presidential campaign, and it was exciting to see that it got it right.

CBC News
The Winning Words of Candidate-Speak by Colleen Ross
I am indebted to Colleen Ross of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for writing this dynamic piece about the elections model that dives more deeply into some of the linguistic issues.