Everyone learns differently, but cognitive research shows that you tend to remember things better if you use spaced repetition. That is, you learn something, then after a period, you are tested. If you still remember, you get tested again later with a longer interval between tests. If you get it wrong, you get tested earlier. That’s the idea behind [Andy Matuschak ‘s]and [Michael Nielsen’s] quantum computing tutorial. You answer questions embedded in the text. You answer to yourself, so there’s no scoring. However, once you click to reveal the answer, you report if you got the answer correct or not, and the system schedules you for retest based on your report.

Does it work? We don’t know, but we have heard that spaced repetition is good for learning languages, among other things. We suspect that like most learning methods, it works better for some people than others.

The series of essays are reasonably technical and assume you understand linear algebra, complex numbers, and Boolean logic. Of course, there are links to help you pick up any of those you lack. Honestly, those topics will help you in lots of other areas, too, so if you don’t already have those in your tool belt, it wouldn’t hurt to follow some of the links.

If you want to play with quantum computing, we like Quirk. There are also quantum computers you can use for real from IBM, although you’ll run out of gates pretty quickly.