Learning from non-technical writings

During six hours of transit time on my trip from US back to Vietnam, I have read through over half the book Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution by Carlo Rovelli. Why you ask? Well, I just had a hunch that in five years or less, we would be adding new courses and certificates on Quantum Computing to our curriculum, and I would rather not be scrambling when that happens.

The ideas of quantum theory, mechanics, and computing, are confusing. The extent of my understanding about quantum computing is the Schrodinger cat story that I told to impress my students. The biggest challenge in learning about quantum computing, for me, is the abstract and indeterministic aspect of the field which makes reading quantum computing textbooks a chore. And yet, the Rovelli book was a pleasant read. There are abstractions, but they are not presented in the way that says trust the abstractions. Rather, the author presents abstractions as different perspectives on an irreducibly complex problem that is quantum representations. The abstractness is not a pedagogical shortcut, but a consequence of the fact that there is no stable particularity available when describing quantum phenomena.

Reading Helgoland reminded me of two other non-technical technical books that gave me a similar experience. The first is “The Lady Tasting Tea” by David Salsburg, which describes how the field of statistics and probability came about. Through the narration of this book, concepts that I have trouble with, such as t-test, started to make logical sense, as to why did we do what we did. Of course, without the rigorous practice of a traditional learning strategy, I still suck at calculating t-test. What I have achieved though, is chasing away my fear and uncertainty about these tests, and that if I decide to look carefully into the formula of these tests, I will understand the why and the how now. “The Lady Tasting Tea” has done more to improve my fundamental understanding of statistics than any other text books.

The second book is “Unix: A History and Memoirs” by Brian Kernighan. I don’t have the same problem with learning Unix/Linux as I do with statistics and quantum things. Yet, I still have the same euphoria feeling in reading this book, particularly regarding the early design concepts. Once again, the motivating question was not what is the system, but why did it come to be this way. For me, that question is not optional; it is central to learning.

I end this short essay with a quote from Kernighan: It’s important to understand the evolution of the technology that we use and take for granted. The decisions that shaped how that technology developed and thus defined the paths that we took were made by real people, working under the pressures and constraints of the time. The more we know about the history, the more we can appreciate the inventive genius that led to Unix and perhaps better understand why modern computer systems are as they are. If nothing else, choices that might seem wrong-headed or perverse today can often be seen as natural consequences of what was understood and could be accomplished with the resources available at the time.

Based on this small personal experiment, if you find yourself struggling to learn a technical subject, it may help to start with a non-technical or historical account of that field. Not as a shortcut, but as a way to give abstractions something to attach to. It helps more than we tend to admit.