Guofeng Zhang - Quantum Country interview - 2019-06-21

“Stalwart” user

Synthesis + highlights

Guofeng is a CS person who wants to learn QC because he thinks it’ll eventually become important, like ML / blockchain / etc. Trend-influenced. He’s a very diligent student, but not very self-directed. Give him a thing to do, and he’ll do it 100%, but he won’t seek/create the thing.

“I check every day to see if there’s a notification. It’s very important!

How he describes his progress:

“I have a good starting point about quantum computing, but I still need to learn more to be someone who could be really good at it.”
But:
“The reviews really help me remember the points. I still remember the answers to some questions after several months. … This review is very essential knowledge about QC. It can help me to learn more in the future more easily if I take a course of something.”

He’s sold on the belief that this method will help him retain stuff for the long term. He doesn’t feel his progress very viscerally and was surprised when I told him where he stood.

Has hasn’t noticed the card levels; he’s seen the progress graph but doesn’t know what it means.

Raw notes

  • Found it by:
    • HN
    • Hadn’t studied QM or QC
    • Studied CS in college, “I like math”
  • Lives in Tokyo, English as second language
    • It’s impressive that he got through the essay, given his English
    • Clearly a serious student
  • Why read it?
    • Thinks it’s likely to become important
    • Very trend/glamour-influenced, via things like HN
    • “But I didn’t know where to start with QC”
  • First impression of review area
    • “I think the reviews are great”
    • “I take a lot of notes when I read things, but I never review them!”
    • Took a lot of notes for QCVC
    • But didn’t review them afterwards
    • “Having a schedule to review is very helpful”
    • Spaced repetition was new to him
    • “It totally makes sense to me”
    • “It’s very easy to use.”
    • Smartphone too small
  • Card levels
    • Barely noticed them at all
    • Doesn’t know what the graph means
    • When I explained: “It would be great to know that stuff, but I didn’t understand what that means.”
  • Goals
    • Wonders: what should I be doing after I remember all the cards really well?
    • After all these sessions, feels “I have a good starting point about quantum computing, but I still need to learn more to be someone who could be really good at it.”
    • But “The reviews really help me remember the points. I still remember the answers to some questions after several months. … This review is very essential knowledge about QC. It can help me to learn more in the future more easily if I take a course of something.”
  • Emails
    • “I check every day to see if there’s a notification. It’s very important!”
  • Having trouble with any questions?
    • Had to Google for more information about inverting gates
  • Multiple readings
    • When reading /search, decided he needed to reread about states of multi-qubit systems.
    • Didn’t really feel the impact of his review sessions on subsequent readings
  • Requests:
    • Wants to be able to customize review contents
    • “I have written all these notes but I never review them!”
    • Wishes he could bookmark sections of the book.

Prep notes

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Last updated 2023-07-13.