infrequently asked questions
iaq noun, pl. iaqs :
1: initialism for “infrequently asked questions”, a riff on frequently asked questions;
2: a page you should definitely share with anyone who will ask a fun question so that one day it will be half as cool as bill wurtz’s
3: an experimental section on my website!
submit an iaq via this form! no promises i’ll answer… but given what i’ve responded to so far, there is very little i wouldn’t answer :P
it is phi! this may seem surprising, but the first by a large margin is tau
10/29/2026
omg it legitimately had not crossed my mind but now the answer will absolutely be yes at some point (if it is not already one)
10/1/2026
as of the time of writing this, there is a 26-way tie for last place. that's because all of these are infrequently asked.
probably “why are you like this?”, a question to which i have no good answer
9/30/2026
“really??” is such an incredibly versatile question. even when you don’t think so. try just adding it somewhere in the middle of a conversation next time
probably “why are you like this?”, a question to which i give different answers every single time but every answer is good
9/30/2026
yeah, you heard me. “what” indeed is the meaning of life!
it stands, of course, for Wear HATs. or was it Warmth, Hearts, And Togetherness? i am fairly certain it wasn’t Work Hard And Toil. maybe it was Wealth, Health, And Telehealth? god, i really should have written this down before i left the zen mountaintop...
9/30/2026
sicilian defense. i just think it’s a wonderfully asymmetric way to start a game and i identify as a lopsided personality
9/30/2026
grey poupon. i will not have any grey poupon.
also not one made of maize. no getting lost in this sauce.
9/30/2026
wdym “still”? you think i love you now? (yes of course)
8/10/2026
if you follow grammar rules, it’s usually A, but for this question there isn’t one
6/24/2026
the list has so many things. teacher? it’s how i got here in the first place. voice acting? probably not a feasible choice given my lack of experience, but that’d be such a fun life. (and ditto musical theater.) run math camps? i mean, not out of the question — a friend quit his math phd to start an advanced math program for really underserved kids…
1/15/2026
why aren’t you like this
1/15/2026
apply sideways. do not do things for the sake of getting into mit, or make mit your goal. make your goal finding something that you deeply enjoy doing. as a byproduct, you may get into mit (it worked for me, and many others), but if it doesn’t work out, it means you have found something you deeply enjoy doing. and that you can take anywhere.
9/1/2025
most: as an undergrad i could get so much face-to-face time with professors, especially being one of few students in a small major who was interested in academia. least: there are lots of times where i felt i was learning similar content in different classes (eg, overlap in reviewing econometric strategies for applied classes). i don’t think there’s a good way to solve this because of how “choose your own adventure” the major is, but it did mean, for example, that i didn’t end up doing econometrics super in depth until i hit grad school
9/1/2025
love a good bike lane
8/14/2025
the one over troubled water
8/12/2025
horrible? no. but definitely not for everyone. i’d say key reasons that it’s bad for most people include
- post-classes, you manage your entire time. no one tells you what to do, you have to figure out what to research, and because econ doesn’t revolve around a lab setup, it is far more unstructured than most science phds;
- to get admitted to graduate school, you need to take a bunch of math (the usual rec is through real analysis). while you might not use all (or even any) of it in grad school, it is an enormous cost in terms of time and effort if you aren’t excited to take it. more generally, getting into grad school has you jump through many hoops, and there may well be some you either don’t enjoy or have no use for
- you actively don’t enjoy the process of research. there’s people that say you must love it to go, but i didn’t know whether i did or not when i started (and still don’t). but certainly, you shouldn’t hate it, because you will spend 5–6 years in grad school, and if you go the academia route, another several trying to get tenure. i think seeing it as a “means to an end” implies that you’re going to have several years of your life where you aren’t enjoying what you’re doing.
3/17/2025
i hope the answer to all of these is no
3/17/2025
did you mean “a sofa fairy hunts water vapor origami”?
jk. but i think i’ll always have a soft spot for “eleven plus two = twelve plus one”, as well as “the Morse code = here comes dots”. and while not my favorite, an incredible construction is Washington Crossing the Delaware
10/27/2024
very partial to #f47c44 (which is why it’s used on my website)
10/25/2024
well, what defines a person? is it the things that they do? the values they hold? the identities they take? the ways that they are perceived? the ways they want to be perceived? is the self defined by the way one wants to define oneself or the ways in which others define them? and what happens when all of these are context dependent? sure, one may contain multitudes, but when you look at them from afar, what type of person do they add up to? perhaps this is an impossible question to answer, and there is no such thing as a self.
just kidding. i’m a large language model trained on all of phi’s blogs and messages. there’s no way a human could write all this nonsense.
10/22/2024
always a sucker for a meatball parmesan
10/22/2024
because there are correct answers
10/22/2024
hell yeah. according to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. the bee, of course, flies anyways, because bees don’t care what humans think is impossible. yellow, black. yellow, black. yellow, black. yellow, black. ooh, black and yellow, let’s shake things up a little
10/22/2024
can’t say i have, if you have a jar and padding please lmk
10/22/2024
a few in the current moment:
- what is your least important gripe about [X town]? e.g., for boston, the bus is \$1.70 and the T is \$2.40; i really really really want them to be nice multiples of each other. for dc, the sidewalks and blocks are just. too. wide.
- what part of your personality are you most proud of? (or least, and want to change?)
- what made you laugh the hardest in the last year?
- what does it mean to be friends with someone, or to know someone? (and the many follow-up questions this creates)
10/22/2024
she does! she says “how did i get here? i’m only supposed to go somewhere when someone says ‘mother mary’ three times, and i think it is very clear that you did not since three is the highest number you can count to”
10/21/2024
two
10/21/2024
nacreous
10/21/2024