What are the best introductions to qubits?

[KevinR_Intel]

What are some of your favorite introductions to learning to entangle qubits, and why?

A question that I get from many of the new users signing up for the Intel(R) Quantum SDK is where do I turn begin learning the basics? The challenge that I notice is that programmers of different backgrounds (or with different goals) need different routes; and that many practitioners today took "inefficient routes," e.g. my own career path began as modeling quantum systems with "classical" algorithms and carried me deeply into quantum mechanics before I ever looked at what can be done with a qubit. While I very much enjoyed working through Griffiths, then Sakurai, (and I don't want to leave out Szabo and Ostland), and much later Nielsen and Chuang, I'm feel confident that there are paths better suited to some learners.

[Yaknan-John]

Hmmmm! This is an interesting topic and I think several new bees are often shy to talk about this issue perhaps for fear of being perceived as dull.

Coming from the Computer Science background, I observed that most Quantum programmers have a very strong physics background. They already have an appreciable knowledge of Quantum Mechanics that makes it easier to understand the whys of certain lines of code. A Computer Scientist's desire is to first understand the problem and idea then create a sort of building block for the solution. The concepts of quantum mechanics are a bit strange and gives a beginner coming from such a background mental block.

For me, I started with refreshing my linear algebra using Nielson especially vectors and Hilbert spaces, eigenvalues, eigenvectors, the concept of orthonormality, tensor products, matrix decomposition, unitary matrices and rotations. I came across a book by Yanofsky titled Quantum Computing for Computer Scientists which expounded on basic physics concepts, their mathematical representations and applications using linear algebra in Quantum computing. These helped me in making sense of Quantum Computing.
Additionally, youtube videos on selected topics helped in my journey as well as having good mentorship from experts willing to be flooded with questions.

I think more video tutorial series would definitely help the learner catchup fast. I hope this helps.

[Jennifer_Paykin]

Great question!

Coming from a computer science background, I also like Quantum Computing for Computer Scientists by Yanofsky  and Mannucci; it presents things using pretty basic linear algebra that I was able to follow with very little physics background. 

Microsoft also has good resources for beginners, like this page on linear algebra for quantum computing.