6

What Do You Mean “Probably”?

Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.

John von Neumann 223

Here’s the key to what we cover in this chapter: in any given situation, the sum of the probabilities of all the possible things that could happen always adds up to 1.

In this short chapter, I cover the basics of practical probability theory to get us started on quantum computing and its applications.

Topics covered in this chapter

  1. 6.1. Being discrete
  2. 6.2. More formally
  3. 6.3. Wrong again?
  4. 6.4. Probability and error detection
  5. 6.5. Randomness
  6. 6.6. Expectation
  7. 6.7. Hellinger distance
  8. 6.8. Markov and Chebyshev go to the casino
  9. 6.9. Summary

6.1 Being discrete

Sometimes, it seems like ...

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