This isn't me, this is a chicken. Which is a metaphor for the fact that I care about the welfare of all sentient beings.


I’m Michael Dickens. I do independent research as well as consulting for Arb Research, with a focus on quantitative modeling for nonprofits. Previously, I worked as a software developer at Affirm.

On this website, I write about topics that interest me, with a bias toward topics that I think are important.

I intend to donate (at least) 20% of my lifetime income to effective charities. I publish my donations on my Donations page.

I have also written some open source programs on GitHub, including the world’s fastest keyboard layout optimizer.

Email: web & mdickens.me (and by & I mean @)

Top Posts

If you want to get up to speed on my writings, I’ve collected two lists of some of my best posts.

My favorite non-mathy posts, in chronological order:

And my favorite mathy posts: