The next episode in the fAQ video podcast is now up! As mentioned last time, this is a new project I've embarked on with Adam Green where we chat about different ideas in quantum physics and (at some point) AI. Our primary goal is simply to help make these ideas more accessible to wide audiences — especially to folks who may've heard about certain words in, say, the popular media, but who may not have a technical background and who aren't really sure what those words mean.

We thought it'd be good to launch the podcast with some basic, fundamental ideas that can be used as a foundation for discussing real-world application in future episodes. Last time we introduced the topic of qubits, and today we're focusing on another basic topic, namely superposition.

So, what is superposition? We spend nearly an hour on this question, so I won't spoil it all for you! But there are a few remarks I can't resist sharing here.

In a bit of fun news, I've just launched a new video podcast with my coworker Adam Green. This new video series, which we're calling fAQ, consists of casual conversations between me and Adam on basic ideas in quantum physics and eventually some topics in AI. (Hence the "A" and "Q," which is also a hat tip to our employer, SandboxAQ.) The target audience is very broad and includes any curious human who wants to learn more about these ideas. Our hope is that these informal chats might help demystify some ideas in math, physics, and their applications and make the concepts more accessible to wide audiences.

Adam is a biologist by training, an excellent science communicator, and before joining Sandbox he was the Director of US Academic Content at Khan Academy. He's now the Head of Science education at Sandbox, and since neither of us are physicists, we're essentially working together to learn new things and are inviting anyone to join us!

Our plan is to spend the first few episodes discussing fundamental ideas, just to lay down some ground work, and then we'll see where things go from there. So, without any further ado, here's a short seven minute "trailer" video we made to introduce the podcast.

Recently on The Math3ma Institute's blog, I announced an upcoming event that will be hosted at The Master's University (TMU), which is a small private university in Santa Clarita, California. I wanted to briefly mention it here, too, in case it might be of interest to any readers.

This summer on June 9–10, I'll be joined by NASA astronaut Jeffrey Williams and molecular geneticist Beth Sullivan (Duke University) for a two-day symposium, which invites folks with vocations in a wide range of scientific disciplines from academia, industry, and government for a time of fellowship, encouragement, and the opportunity for dialogue and discussion. We're also honored to be joined by theologian Abner Chou, the president of TMU, as well as John MacArthur, the chancellor of TMU and the pastor of Grace Community Church in Los Angeles.

If you're interested to learn more, details and registration are now available at: www.masters.edu/math3ma.

Today I'm excited to share a few new videos with you. But first, a little background.

As you may know, I started working at Alphabet, Inc. just after finishing graduate school in 2020. I was on a team of amazing people that formed the core of what is now SandboxAQ, a new company focusing on AI and quantum technologies, which spun out of Alphabet in March 2022. There were several news articles about this, including this one from the Wall Street Journal and this one from Forbes. More press coverage is listed on the company website here.

But what is SandboxAQ exactly?  I recently asked Sandbox founder and CEO Jack Hidary that question, and you can now check it out on our new YouTube channel. Take a look!

Hello world! Last summer I wrote a short paper entitled "Entropy as a Topological Operad Derivation," which describes a small but interesting connection between information theory, abstract algebra, and topology. I blogged about it here in June 2021, and the paper was later published in an open-access journal called Entropy in September 2021. In short, it describes a correspondence between Shannon entropy and functions on topological simplices that obey a version of the Leibniz rule from calculus, which I call "derivations of the operad of topological simplices," hence the title.

By what do those words mean? And why is such a theorem interesting?

‍To help make the ideas more accessible, I've recently written a new article aimed at a wide audience to explain it all from the ground up. I'm very excited to share it with you! It's entitled "A New Perspective of Entropy," and a trailer video is below:

As mentioned in the video, the reader is not assumed to have prior familiarity with the words "information theory" or "abstract algebra" or "topology" or even "Shannon entropy." All these ideas are gently introduced from the ground up.