Pavan Jayasinha | October 2020 Newsletter

👋 Hey ! 👋

Welcome back, if you're new here, I look forward to giving you the monthly pulse on what I've been up to. I spent most of this time learning quantum mechanics and working on Luminate, which I thought would be worth sharing. 
Disrupting education
🏫Luminate
Converting Speech to Visual Animations

As a team, we were disheartened to see the rise in disengagement by students studying math. After drilling deeper, we found that the reason behind this is a lack of visual explanations which drastically hampers understanding. The best visual explanations are animations and we wanted more of them in the classroom.

Since most teachers can't code custom animations, we made an artificial intelligence software that makes animations based on voice command. Educators should be equipped with 21st-century tools, not 150-year old blackboards.  

Want to see more? Click below to see the pitch, demo, and white paper!!
Pitch + white paper
See it in action
The Experience

Luminate was built as part of a two-day global hackathon hosted by TKS. Despite the non-stop toil, and the tight timeline, bringing the idea to fruition was a fantastic experience and developed many friendships along the way! 😀
On the quantum computing front
Learning to focus on what matters

I get an itch that gets worse when I proceed to another concept before mastering the current one. This would be fine in most cases, but not when you're learning quantum computing at the age of 17. Let's just say, the rabbit hole opportunities are plenty. I'll often encounter some esoteric concept I don't get, and spend several hours trying to understand it, to finally come to the conclusion that it requires graduate-level maths. 

I'm learning to fight that itch by focusing on understanding what really matters. Efficient use of time is the motive. ⏳

As far as what I've done, not many "showcase" things to share but a lot of under-the-hood knowledge gained:

  • Finished up with linear algebra prereq knowledge
  • Phase kickback
  • Deutsche's Algorithm
  • Dabbled in nuclear magnetic resonance for quantum hardware

As always, helpful resources will be linked below! Also, I enrolled in a year-long course covering quantum computing taught by MIT and Oxford researchers, enjoying it so far! 😄🙌

What I haven't done:

Quantum programming! Last month, I promised to start with Qiskit (library for QC programming) but I got held up on quantum mechanics! I'm announcing this here to keep me accountable this month to build at least one working project! No excuses.
Articles
Publication

I couldn't find complete answers to some of my questions in quantum computing. So after I encountered that "aha" moment from hours of searching the web, I consolidated my understanding and packaged it into articles. 
What are they, and why do they exist?
Looking at Quantum Circuit Simulators

Answers an elementary question I had--why do we need quantum computers if we can simulate them on classical computers? Plus, it includes everything else one should know about quantum circuit simulators before diving into Qiskit. 
An intuitive approach from absolute scratch
But what is a quantum phase factor?

I wrote this article to my past self thoroughly explaining the utility of the third dimension on a Bloch sphere with a prelude on phase factors (the property that allows for interference). 
Good news spotlight
The surge in new businesses in America

The government has released figures that highlight a surge in new startups, derived from tax registrations. Well, that's kind of awkward for economists. 👉👈 The last recession led to a steep decline in new startups, so the same was predicted this time around. Then why the rise of entrepreneurship all of a sudden? Economists aren't sure yet, but they suspect the stimulus package passed in March played a key role. The combination of increasing unemployment-insurance payments with the stimulus cheques seems to have given people the extra financial security needed to take on the risk of founding a business.

Helpful Resources
What's next?
  • QISKITTING! One project at least
  • Publish more articles to share what I learn along the way

Quote I'm pondering...

“Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life.”                           -Robin Sharma

Thanks for tuning in,

Pavan
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Pavan Jayasinha

401 Bay Street, Toronto
ON M5H 2Y4 Canada

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