[Pegah] Hello, I'm Pegah Bodaghi, and this is the ninth episode of the Number Pi podcast.

In this episode, we're going to talk about real-world applications of math in everyday life.

Does it actually have applications? Is it possible to establish a connection between the real world and mathematical concepts? In a way that provides some benefit, solves a problem for us, or manifests in our lives. These are the things we want to talk about.

But in this episode, I'm not going to talk about these alone, and I have a guest. My guest is Arman. Arman Jafarnezhad, someone who I think has this perspective on math. Before we talk to him, let me introduce him a bit, because he's a very humble person as well, so it's better if I introduce him. Arman naturally studied math in high school, went to Helli, then studied CS at Kharazmi University—I mean Computer Science. After graduating, he worked in Iran for a few years, at ZarinPal, Bit24, and was a Backend Team Lead at Quera.

And now he's been in Canada for about three or four years, working as a Senior Software Engineer. In Toronto, in 2024 and 2025, he was a judge and mentor for the GenAI hackathon held at the University of Toronto. He has worked at large American and Canadian companies and with various businesses, each of which can naturally give a person their own unique perspective. But well, the reason I invited Arman wasn't these LinkedIn resume details I mentioned. The reason is that Arman really loves math and connects it to real life in a fun way. When I saw his projects on his Twitter account, and then looked at his GitHub and his own website, and then we talked more about them together, what he had done was really interesting and fun to me. In the end, I invited him to come here and tell us a bit more about his projects and work, and fortunately he agreed to give me this time and record this episode together. Parenthetically, especially since I know he's been invited elsewhere and didn't go. Alright, let's get started. Hi Arman, good day. Thanks for coming. Is there anything about yourself you'd like to share that I haven't mentioned so far?

[Arman] Hi, thanks for inviting me. Uh, no, it was really complete. Very—you even said a few things I didn't know myself.

[Pegah] Well, awesome. Uh... I told you I should introduce you myself! Before we jump into your projects, could you tell me a little bit about your relationship with math? For example, what were your grades like in school, university, and so on? How did you feel about it in general? Did you always get top grades?

[Arman] My relationship with math was a very strange one. Meaning during school—well, I don't remember elementary school very well, but in middle school and especially high school, my math wasn't really that good, to be honest. It was pretty, in a way, ordinary. That is, it was like all the other kids. Neither like some super strange math prodigy, nor on the other extreme where I had no sense of math at all. But in high school, a few things started becoming appealing to me. For instance, geometry was appealing. Not analytic geometry, the other one, non-analytic geometry. That was very appealing to me. I remember geometry questions were among the fun exam questions for me, and...

...that's how I started actually developing an interest in different branches of math, not purely pure math or, say, the entity of math itself.

And at university—well, I studied computer science at university, I was at Kharazmi University—and computer science has a lot of math. That is, you could say in my opinion 90 percent of it was math. Maybe up to 10 percent of it was computers and, like, coding and stuff, and that 90 percent was math.

At the university level, it was a bit annoying because it was hard for me. The reason was that most of it was analytical, most of it was theoretical. Meaning it wasn't tangible, in a way. Like, we would prove why one is smaller than two. Then I was like, well, okay...

It's interesting, but...

Yeah, long story short...

My grades weren't good, if I'm being honest. Neither in elementary school, nor in high school, nor in university. None of them were good. Now, geometry was a little good, but no, really, those grades weren't good.

[Pegah] Umm, yeah, I get it. I was in basic sciences too, and my grades weren't very good at university, so I completely know what you mean when you say that course or subject is fun in itself, but it's hard. It's just hard. For instance, the topic is like, as you said, proving that...

one exists, or, I don't know, the number of unknowns in a problem is itself unknown. Or for example, I remember once in a linear algebra class taught by Ghadermarzi, one of the professors at the University of Tehran, he suddenly said, 'Imagine an n-dimensional space,' and then paused for a few seconds and said, 'Well, of course you can't, because we can't visualize more than three dimensions.' Now, umm, in terms of linear algebra, overall it's more tangible, meaning it's relatively more practical and you can somewhat see it, and over time as you work on that multidimensional space, you get a feel for it, but overall that's the kind of vibe it is.

I totally get what you're saying.

Alright, let me move forward to your projects. Umm, honestly, I wanted to go in your preferred order, but on the other hand, I'd like the first one to be Ganjoorjoor.

Partly because of that whole poetry and literature vibe, and also because, as far as I know, this project got a lot of views and attention on social media. Right?

[Arman] Yeah.