6 ms·

Peter Shor's MIT Fall 2022 course lecture notes on quantum computing

165 points by programd 3y ago

DonsDiscountGas 3y ago
These courses are usually taught by CS departments assuming a CS background. Anyone aware of corresponding courses for people with a physics background?
pallas_athena 3y ago
I periodically read about quantum computing, get interested for a brief time, then promptly forget everything. https://quantum.country/ https://quantum.country/ is my best friend here
frognumber 3y ago
I have not reviewed these, but this course used to be co-taught by Peter Shor and Seth Lloyd. Peter Shor was smarter, but a bad teacher. Seth Lloyd was a much better teacher. Together, the two made a good team. There's an obsession with finding the most famous person to teach, but on the whole, I'd pick Seth's lecture notes over Peter's any day.
abdullahkhalids 3y ago
I have taught a course on quantum computing a few times, mostly to CS students who have no background in quantum mechanics. The way I proceed is to * First introduce classical reversible computation. I model it using linear algebra, meaning classical n-bit states are 2^n length binary vectors, and the gates are 2^n x 2^n binary matrices acting on theses states. Exponential, yes, but a faithful model. The critical feature here is that you already need the tensor product structure. Rather than some unique feature of quantum. * Introduce probabilistic classical computation. Now the states/vectors have real entries in [0,1] and obey the L1 norm (the critical feature). Similarly, the gate matrices. * Now, argue that quantum computing just requires the same linear algebriac structure but we (1) work over the complex number field, (2) norm is L2. The reason I like this development is that it takes at least some of the mystery out of quantum mechanics. It is not a strange model of computation, completely divorced from classical. Just a variant of it, that happens to be the one the universe runs on. Peter Shor does discuss classical computation in two lectures, but from just the notes it seems detached from the rest of the course.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jahsome 3y ago
  On behalf of my fellow English majors, may I just say: What?? I love Hacker News because it exposes me to a great deal of things like this. I intend to do as deep a dive I can muster into the provided lecture notes. But boy howdy, are certain topics I encounter here humbling. If I were fully honest with myself I would avoid a certain subset of the content on hn. Sometimes I think it only fuels my impostor syndrome.
  - noman-land 3y ago
    Don't worry, I had the same reaction. But you're not an impostor for spending your time learning whatever it is you're learning instead of this.
    - jahsome 3y ago
      My issue is, I seem to only ever be interested in learning the things I struggle with...
      - noman-land 3y ago
        Why bother learning things that are easy?
        CoastalCoder 3y ago
        Some learning is for necessity, rather than for its own enjoyment.
        jahsome 3y ago
        When it's somewhat irrelevant to focus on the hard things, which are more appealing, I find it's frustrating not being motivated to solve the more pressing, easier issues because they're not "fun"
FabHK 3y ago
To download all of the pdfs into the current directory: wget -r -np -nd -l 1 -A pdf https://math.mit.edu/~shor/435-LN/ (There might be more elegant ways, but this does the job.) -r, --recursive specify recursive download. -np, --no-parent don't ascend to the parent directory. -l, --level=NUMBER maximum recursion depth (inf or 0 for infinite). -A, --accept=LIST comma-separated list of accepted extensions. -nd, --no-directories Do not create a hierarchy of directories
__rito__ 3y ago
Quantum Computing made sense to me for the first time, when I came across Umesh Vazirani's MOOC on Coursera. It is not there anymore. It can be found on YouTube.
- abdullahkhalids 3y ago
  That is indeed a beautiful course. UZ has a way with explanations. Here is a link of the course lecture videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPsl_5RQe1A&list=PLnhoxwUZN7-6hB2iWNhLrakuODLaxPTOG https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPsl_5RQe1A&list=PLnhoxwUZN7...
  - nemo8551 3y ago
    Thanks for this, I’ll give this a watch.
alexalx666 3y ago
Among math heavy lectures there are quite a few very interesting introductions to various topics like cryptography
- tak2hu 3y ago
  Can you link some examples?
  - FabHK 3y ago
    This one from Dan Boneh at Stanford is a good intro to cryptography (you can see that it's old as "crypto" (in the URL) was the abbreviation for cryptography still back then...) https://www.coursera.org/learn/crypto https://www.coursera.org/learn/crypto https://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/courses/OnlineCrypto/ https://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/courses/OnlineCrypto/ (Part two has been going live anytime now for ages... but it's still not there: https://www.coursera.org/learn/crypto2 https://www.coursera.org/learn/crypto2)
AmIDev 3y ago
When learning classical computing, I have done the following things that gave me a deeper understanding of how things work. 1. Learned logic gates and built(in simulators) small circuits which can do addition/multiplication. 2. Used a 8085 board to write assembly programs for search/sort etc. 3. Learnt C programming and Operating systems(primarily Linux) 4. Learnt higher level programming languages and paradigms(OOP, compilation, etc). What set of courses/topics would lead to a similar level of understanding in the quantum domain? I have learnt about the quantum gates, but I do not have to context to understand how they fit in the larger picture.
- georgeg23 3y ago
  The larger picture isn't clear to anyone (yet?)
- reedf1 3y ago
  Quantum gates/circuits are everything - unlike classical computing there is no abstraction built on top. The circuits are built and configured in a classical computer and then the configuration is loaded into the quantum computer. Why not try playing around with some quantum circuits via qiskit, you can actually run them on a real quantum computer for a few cents with Amazon braket.
- varjag 3y ago
  You can wing it in classical domain by tinkering and reading source code aided with just school level algebra but it does not translate to quantum algorithms really. They will remain impenetrable until you invest into mastering mathematical concepts behind it, so most of the courses you need would be intermediate level math. Linear algebra, calculus, probability theory, some bits of number theory…

165 points by programd 3y ago

These courses are usually taught by CS departments assuming a CS background. Anyone aware of corresponding courses for people with a physics background?

pallas_athena 3y ago

I periodically read about quantum computing, get interested for a brief time, then promptly forget everything. https://quantum.country/ https://quantum.country/ is my best friend here

frognumber 3y ago

I have not reviewed these, but this course used to be co-taught by Peter Shor and Seth Lloyd. Peter Shor was smarter, but a bad teacher. Seth Lloyd was a much better teacher. Together, the two made a good team. There's an obsession with finding the most famous person to teach, but on the whole, I'd pick Seth's lecture notes over Peter's any day.

abdullahkhalids 3y ago

I have taught a course on quantum computing a few times, mostly to CS students who have no background in quantum mechanics. The way I proceed is to * First introduce classical reversible computation. I model it using linear algebra, meaning classical n-bit states are 2^n length binary vectors, and the gates are 2^n x 2^n binary matrices acting on theses states. Exponential, yes, but a faithful model. The critical feature here is that you already need the tensor product structure. Rather than some unique feature of quantum. * Introduce probabilistic classical computation. Now the states/vectors have real entries in [0,1] and obey the L1 norm (the critical feature). Similarly, the gate matrices. * Now, argue that quantum computing just requires the same linear algebriac structure but we (1) work over the complex number field, (2) norm is L2. The reason I like this development is that it takes at least some of the mystery out of quantum mechanics. It is not a strange model of computation, completely divorced from classical. Just a variant of it, that happens to be the one the universe runs on. Peter Shor does discuss classical computation in two lectures, but from just the notes it seems detached from the rest of the course.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jahsome 3y ago
On behalf of my fellow English majors, may I just say: What?? I love Hacker News because it exposes me to a great deal of things like this. I intend to do as deep a dive I can muster into the provided lecture notes. But boy howdy, are certain topics I encounter here humbling. If I were fully honest with myself I would avoid a certain subset of the content on hn. Sometimes I think it only fuels my impostor syndrome.
- noman-land 3y ago
  Don't worry, I had the same reaction. But you're not an impostor for spending your time learning whatever it is you're learning instead of this.
  - jahsome 3y ago
    My issue is, I seem to only ever be interested in learning the things I struggle with...
    - noman-land 3y ago
      Why bother learning things that are easy?
      - CoastalCoder 3y ago
        Some learning is for necessity, rather than for its own enjoyment.
      - jahsome 3y ago
        When it's somewhat irrelevant to focus on the hard things, which are more appealing, I find it's frustrating not being motivated to solve the more pressing, easier issues because they're not "fun"

FabHK 3y ago

To download all of the pdfs into the current directory: wget -r -np -nd -l 1 -A pdf https://math.mit.edu/~shor/435-LN/ (There might be more elegant ways, but this does the job.) -r, --recursive specify recursive download. -np, --no-parent don't ascend to the parent directory. -l, --level=NUMBER maximum recursion depth (inf or 0 for infinite). -A, --accept=LIST comma-separated list of accepted extensions. -nd, --no-directories Do not create a hierarchy of directories

__rito__ 3y ago

Quantum Computing made sense to me for the first time, when I came across Umesh Vazirani's MOOC on Coursera. It is not there anymore. It can be found on YouTube.

abdullahkhalids 3y ago
That is indeed a beautiful course. UZ has a way with explanations. Here is a link of the course lecture videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPsl_5RQe1A&list=PLnhoxwUZN7-6hB2iWNhLrakuODLaxPTOG https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPsl_5RQe1A&list=PLnhoxwUZN7...
- nemo8551 3y ago
  Thanks for this, I’ll give this a watch.

alexalx666 3y ago

Among math heavy lectures there are quite a few very interesting introductions to various topics like cryptography

tak2hu 3y ago
Can you link some examples?
- FabHK 3y ago
  This one from Dan Boneh at Stanford is a good intro to cryptography (you can see that it's old as "crypto" (in the URL) was the abbreviation for cryptography still back then...) https://www.coursera.org/learn/crypto https://www.coursera.org/learn/crypto https://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/courses/OnlineCrypto/ https://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/courses/OnlineCrypto/ (Part two has been going live anytime now for ages... but it's still not there: https://www.coursera.org/learn/crypto2 https://www.coursera.org/learn/crypto2)

AmIDev 3y ago

When learning classical computing, I have done the following things that gave me a deeper understanding of how things work. 1. Learned logic gates and built(in simulators) small circuits which can do addition/multiplication. 2. Used a 8085 board to write assembly programs for search/sort etc. 3. Learnt C programming and Operating systems(primarily Linux) 4. Learnt higher level programming languages and paradigms(OOP, compilation, etc). What set of courses/topics would lead to a similar level of understanding in the quantum domain? I have learnt about the quantum gates, but I do not have to context to understand how they fit in the larger picture.

georgeg23 3y ago
The larger picture isn't clear to anyone (yet?)
reedf1 3y ago
Quantum gates/circuits are everything - unlike classical computing there is no abstraction built on top. The circuits are built and configured in a classical computer and then the configuration is loaded into the quantum computer. Why not try playing around with some quantum circuits via qiskit, you can actually run them on a real quantum computer for a few cents with Amazon braket.
varjag 3y ago
You can wing it in classical domain by tinkering and reading source code aided with just school level algebra but it does not translate to quantum algorithms really. They will remain impenetrable until you invest into mastering mathematical concepts behind it, so most of the courses you need would be intermediate level math. Linear algebra, calculus, probability theory, some bits of number theory…