#635 overall
Quantum Computing Lecture Notes (John Watrous)
University of Waterloo
1 recommender · 1 thread · recommended in 1 year, 2026 · score 0.7
A set of lecture notes on quantum computing theory from the University of Waterloo, covering the mathematical foundations of quantum information and computation. It starts from an analogy to ordinary probabilistic computation.
Commenters recommend it for learning quantum computing theory, noting it opens with a helpful analogy to probabilistic computation.
Mathematicsintermediatefreeself-paced text#quantum computing#quantum information#theory#watrous#lecture notes
Recommendations by year
20062026
For learning the theory behind quantum computing, I usually recommend Watrous's lecture notes [1] - they start out by immediately giving a helpful analogy to ordinary probabilistic computation.
The online tutorial [2] is a good followup, especially if you want to understand Clifford gates / stabilizer states, which are important for quantum error correction.
If you have a more theoretical bent, you may enjoy learning about the ZX-calculus [3] - I found this useful for understanding how measurement-based quantum computing is supposed to work.
[1] https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~watrous/QC-notes/QC-notes.pdf [2] https://qubit.guide/ [3] https://zxcalculus.com/