Category Theory as an educational tool in The Guardian / Observer

[Bob Coecke <Bob.Coecke@quantinuum.com>]

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Hi all,


We would like to point to an article in the Guardian / Observer earlier this week that was about the educational benefits of category theory, as compellingly demonstrated by an experiment that we just did:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/dec/16/physicist-bob-coecke-its-easier-to-convince-kids-than-adults-about-quantum-mechanics<https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/urNHCGv0Z6fQMyr7FK2coJ?domain=theguardian.com>


The word “category theory” only occurs twice, but it all concerns monoidal string diagrams, with structures like dagger compact closure and dagger Frobenius algebras.


Concretely, what we did was teach 60 fairly averagely chosen 15-17 yr old secondary school students categorical quantum mechanics using the book “Quantum in Pictures” by Stefano Gogioso and myself.  The only maths pre-requisite for that book is knowing how angles add up.  We have video lectures of the book that we will release soon, and also recorded some worked-out exercises that we also will release  soonish.  With these resources we created an on-line course that follows the template of a typical Oxford post-grad course, but without the benefits of in person teaching.


We then subjected the students to an exam exclusively consisting of Oxford post-grad quantum exam questions.


The result: 80% passed and almost 40% got distinctions.


Here is a statement by Oxford Uni about the experiment:


https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/news/2280-full.html<https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/_yQdCJyBZ6tDY4kJuGzR4O?domain=cs.ox.ac.uk>


and here is an extensive blog post I wrote about it, providing some additional context:


https://medium.com/quantinuum/everyone-can-learn-quantum-now-even-at-a-cutting-edge-level-and-we-have-the-test-scores-to-prove-49e7fdc5c509<https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/pyADCK1DOrCGnAQos3wKw3?domain=medium.com>


All our best wishes for the new year!



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