Mathematics · Economics · Philosophy / Dhaka
আবদুল্লাহ আহনাফ মাহদী
How do people decide, how do the systems around them shape those decisions, and what does that reveal about human nature?
I trained in mathematics, I am completing a master’s in economics at the University of Dhaka, and for the past decade I have helped lead a school in Uttara. All three keep pointing me to the same question about the mind. I am preparing for doctoral study in decision science, beginning Fall 2027.
PhD applications · Fall 2027
Four questions that I treat as one: how minds choose, how institutions shape them, what can be proved about reasoning, and what all of it says about human nature.
How people judge, choose and make mistakes, and why the mistakes are so regular. I read behavioural economics and cognitive science as two views of one question about the mind, and I want the formal tools of mathematics to carry the weight in both.
Assessment systems do more than measure students. I compare the high-stakes exam cultures of Bangladesh and the wider subcontinent with China and other systems, and trace how a score becomes a self-image, how self-image hardens into class and opportunity, and how that feeds brain drain and economic outcomes. The aim is a formal theory with hypotheses that can be tested against data.
My longest-horizon question is P versus NP, approached from its logical side through descriptive complexity and proof complexity. I am building the habits it demands by learning formal proof in Lean 4.
A philosophical project, argued from first principles, on which beliefs, values and institutions suit human nature and which ones damage it. History, religion, economics and cognitive science serve as evidence; nothing is fixed in advance. The first essay asks how a shared heritage forms a collective civilisational consciousness, starting with Bangladesh.
Learning Global Economic Dynamics: A Temporal Graph Network Approach for Multi-Country Macroeconomic Forecasting
Treats countries as nodes in an evolving network and uses temporal graph networks to forecast macroeconomic indicators across many economies at once.
Collective civilisational consciousness: the case of Bangladesh
How heritage and shared memory shape a nation’s culture and its political reality.
Dhaka’s footpath hawkers: a policy paper
Street-vending livelihoods against pedestrian space in one of the world’s densest cities, and the policy options between them.
Value chain analysis of the Social Marketing Company (SMC)
Porter’s value chain framework applied to SMC, a Bangladeshi social marketing enterprise.
Education is where I test ideas against real students, families and budgets.
I lead the school’s governance and strategy, and took on executive responsibility in 2024.
Online teaching and coaching that grew out of the school’s after-school programme.
A practice platform for O Level and IGCSE mathematics that rates both students and problems on an Elo scale, the way online chess rates players, so each student meets problems pitched just above their level. Written in Bangla and English.
Dhaka School of Economics, a constituent institution of the University of Dhaka.
Updated November 2026
For research conversations, supervision, collaboration or the school, write to me. If you supervise in decision science, cognitive science or philosophy, I would be especially glad to hear from you.