Introduction

This blog will document my progress in learning the science of quantum computation. I am coming at this as a total newb and have so far spent many hours scratching my head over various wikipedia articles, news articles, and powerpoint presentations.

I purchased Nielsen and Chuang's Quantum Computation and Quantum Information: 10th Anniversary Edition and have been chugging away at that. Recently I also purchased Yanofsky's Quantum Computing for Computer Scientists because I felt that Nielsen and Chuang assumed a certain familiarity with concepts with which I am not familiar. My Comp-Sci education is the only thing I'm bringing to the table here. I have effectively no prior knowledge of quantum mechanics except for the small amount of reading I've done recently, and I have very little memory of the mathematics courses I took (up to and including Calc 2).

My plan is to catalog every question I have, the answers I find, and the insights I gather, in the field of quantum computation. Topics will pertain to QC in general, the texts I am using, as well as in mathematics, and the philosophy of computer and information science.