Archive - arg min

Learning From the Mess

What the vitamin story tells us about reproducibility, discovery, and human nature.

7 hrs ago • Ben Recht

The Vital Amines

Assembling the consensus on the necessity of vitamins.

Mar 4 • Ben Recht

At least it's an ethos?

The limits of optimal control, from the maximalist and minimalist perspectives

Mar 2 • Ben Recht

February 2026

Defining Normal to See Abnormal

The data scientific techniques used to find dietary allowances.

Feb 27 • Ben Recht

Ratts of the Capital

In the quest for knowledge, Elmer McCollum cooks up some synthetic rodent food.

Feb 26 • Ben Recht

A Single Grain Experiment

Steampunk Data Science - Part 2

Feb 25 • Ben Recht

Can anyone fix science?

Science has always been in crisis. This is fine.

Feb 24 • Ben Recht

Maximum Principles

A crash course on optimal control

Feb 23 • Ben Recht

LLMs make metascience easier, but that doesn't increase metascientific validity.

Feb 18 • Ben Recht

Searching for Stability

The theoretical and pedagogical links between optimization and control

Feb 11 • Ben Recht

Advanced Simplicity

Building up a theory of feedback from proportional-integral-derivative building blocks

Feb 9 • Ben Recht

Secrets of Intelligence Services

I asked Claude code to build Claude code. You won’t believe what happened next.

Feb 6 • Ben Recht

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