I wrote a textbook (kinda...)

Lemnisket

Hey there,

I finally launched lemnisket.com two days ago.

It’s basically an introductory quantum computing textbook, that adapts to everyone’s unique learning ability and pre-requisite knowledge! No hardcore math pre-requisites required (just high school algebra and trig), and no physics.

Freshman level physics courses are next!

Note: I do think this first course is probably most appropriate for someone that’s already working in a technical field, or had a technical education, even though I worked very very hard to make it as easily digestible and well-scaffolded as possible. I think it still requires a bit of mathematical familiarity, even though it’s only early high school level.

But when the physics courses go live, those will be truly accessible to everyone.

(Btw, not affiliated, but if you want to up your math skills, even if you’re starting from zero, go to mathacademy.com. Our intro to quantum computing course basically requires about half of what’s covered in their “Math Foundations II” course, and they were the main inspiration for what we’ve been working on for the past eight months at Lemnisket. I love them).

I really want Lemnisket to re-define physical sciences education, and eventually education as a whole.

No more $1000+ university courses, $50+/hr tutors, unimaginably boring and awful professors that couldn’t care less about teaching, and one-size-fits-all 4 year degrees.

Instead, a platform where you go, it’s the real deal (not “edu-tainment” like DuoLingo or Brilliant), and it’s personalized. It understands your unique pre-requisite knowledge, it understands your personal working memory capacity, serves you reviews when you need them, tests your knowledge adaptively, and makes sure you have mastered all pre-requisite material before moving you on to more advanced topics.

So that you never feel lost, or get discouraged, feel like you can’t do it, it’s not for you, think you’re too dumb, etc, etc…

I dream of a world where anyone who is interested in anything can learn that thing as efficiently and effectively as possible, so they can start applying their uniquely human creativity to the field asap!

We ran a beta with 15 students over the past few months and it went great, a handful of people finished the entire course (all 50+ topics and 300+ exercises) within the 8 week time frame. I learned a lot making this course, and genuinely feel like this was about the same amount of work as just straight up writing a textbook.

Except the delivery of this “textbook” should be orders of magnitude better than just buying a textbook online and trying to work through it yourself. Because it’s personalized, has you solving a ton of problems (that are at just the right level for you), and serves you reviews of material you may have forgotten using a Spaced Repetition System (no AI!!), just before you forget it.

I do have a vision of eventually any expert, no matter their field, using Lemnisket to write their own “textbook”, and have it delivered to those who buy it in a personalized way, with reviews/quizzes and diagnostic tests to make sure EVERYONE that’s interested, no matter their background or personal aptitude, can learn the material.

If this sounds cool to you, especially if you’re working as an engineer of some type, are still a stem student, or just a serial self-learner, and are curious about what’s going on in the (rapidly expanding) quantum computing industry, and maybe even want to prepare for a job in this field one day, then do have a look at lemnisket.com and let me know your thoughts.

Or if you know anyone that’s one of the above, I’d really appreciate it if you kept us in mind when chatting with them :)

Anyways, that’s all for now, hope you are all doing well.

All the best,
Chris