Course Syllabus

About 8.370/18.435/2.111/6.6410: Quantum Computation

Welcome to the course!

There will be 9 (±1) psets that you will be turning in on Gradescope (which I will link from Canvas before the first homework is due). There will also be two midterms (dates to be announced) and a final (during finals week).

Grading Scheme: 

The midterms will count for 15% of the grade each; the final will count for 30%, and the homework will count for 40%. 

Unless the tests are much harder than I plan for (this has happened), the grading scheme will be 

A = 90-100,

B = 80-89,

C = 70-79.

I don't particularly like setting a grade cutoff for D's and F's, because much of the time when a student does that poorly, there are extenuating circumstances, and I want to be able to use my judgment. But if there are no extenuating circumstances, any percentage less than 70 will be a D or F.

Exams:

There will be two in-class midterm exam, on October 15 and on Nvember 10. You will be allowed to bring two sides of letter-size pages of notes (one two-sided sheet or two one-sided sheets). There will also be a final during finals week, where you are allowed 2 pages (4 sides) of notes. Notes that are so small that you need a magnifying glass to read them are not allowed.

Homework:

There will be weekly problem sets, due on Gradescope. You can turn in psets 24 hours late for a 10% penalty. Without a note from S3, late psets will not be accepted after the solutions are posted, which we plan to do at least 24 hours after they are due.

Office Hours:

Peter Shor's office hours will be from TBA to TBA on TBA in 2-375. 

Lecture Notes:

The lecture notes from when I taught this class from 2022 are online here. They were written in a year when the course met three times a week, not two (as will be the case this year), so the lecture notes will not align perfectly with the lectures. I will generally be following them. I will not be rewriting most of them, although I may post some supplements to them. 

Textbook:

Two excellent references for the material in this course are the textbook Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, by Nielsen and Chuang, and John Preskill's lecture notes (these are last year's; Caltech doesn't start for another few weeks, so additional lecture notes might be posted when the course website goes up). These are not required, but if you have difficulty understanding the material using just the course notes they are highly recommended.

I will be posting the section numbers relevant to the material we're covering on the course website each week.

Piazza:

There is a Piazza webpage for the course. I don't guarantee that I'll check it that often, so if you need an answer from me right away, you should probably contact me a different way. Email (shor@math.mit.edu) is probably the best. Please feel free ask questions on piazza — and if there's any important information I've left off this syllabus, please ask about it there.

Collaboration:

Collaboration on homework is encouraged. However, please write up your solutions on your own. The purpose of the homework is for you to learn the material, and getting help from somebody will let you learn it better than staring at a blank piece of paper for hours trying to figure out a way to attack the problem. However, copying the solutions verbatim from somebody else will not, and if we notice it, you may end up getting a 0 on that pset.

Student Support Services (S³):