Nicholas Teague - Quantum Country interview - 2019-06-11

“One night stand” user

Synthesis + highlights

Nick’s a bit of a fanboy of both of us, which complicates things.

He’s been trying to learn QC for a while, but not for a strong reason: he just likes learning lots of things.

There’s a boring reason he didn’t review: he says the notifications mostly ended up in the “Social” folder in Gmail, so he didn’t really see them.

He didn’t notice either the on-card level representation or the end-of-review-session completion graph.

Preparation notes

Read both essays but has only done one review session

Last notification was in early April.

Possible error mode: he read more “search” cards but we didn’t email him afterwards?

He did another in preparation for this interview, heh.

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Raw notes

• How’d he find us?
  • Has been following QC for a few years (“professional interest”)
  • Did a presentation on QC+ML for a local meetup
  • Has read Mike & Ike a few years
  • “Can’t claim that I understood it all”
  • Has done a few MOOCs on QC
  • “A challenge of time constraints”
  • Signed up for an edX course recently which uses code demonstrations in the exercises via IBM and Rigetti
  • The MOOCs were all theory
  • Has done “a fair bit of writing on QC and machine learning”
  • An exercise to organize his own thoughts
• On QC:
  • “It was a great counter to the depth of coverage by the textbook.”
  • “The mnemonic device was really useful. It’s something I’d definitely like to see more of elsewhere.”
  • “I really wish I’d had this a few years ago.”
  • I could tell it was an introductory text
• On the medium
  • “The temptation was to say I already knew everything”
  • “The emails to revisit were going to my social folder in Gmail, so I didn’t always see those.”
  • “It was immediately intuitive.”
  • How does it feel when you mark something wrong?
  • Maybe it should be right vs. “remind me again sooner”
  • Reminded him of flashcards
  • The levels
  • Didn’t notice ‘em
• On reviewing
  • “I definitely reviewed twice”
  • (he didn’t)
  • The plot on the ending card
  • Doesn’t recall it
  • Do we have a goal?
  • “I don’t see why there has to be an end-state”
  • (he doesn’t know the goal)
  • What’s “done”?
  • Building; solving problems; brainstorming solutions
  • Will have to go beyond notecards: “those are charted territory.”
  • “It when you’re trying to go off the map.”
  • “The best learning practice for me personally is essay-writing.”
  • “Building software and documenting it via essay has been mutually reinforcing.”