It may seem tempting to try to avoid this mathematics. If you look around the web, there are many flashy introductions to quantum computing that avoid mathematics. There are, for instance, many rather slick videos on YouTube. They can be fun to watch, and the better ones give you some analogies to help make sense of quantum computing. But there’s a hollowness to them. Bluntly, if they don’t explain the actual underlying mathematical model, then you could spend years watching and rewatching such videos, and you’d never really get it. It’s like hanging out with a group of basketball players and listening to them talk about basketball. You might enjoy it, and feel as though you’re learning about basketball. But unless you actually spend a lot of time playing, you’re never going to learn to play basketball. To understand quantum computing, you absolutely must become fluent in the mathematical model.
this is probably true for a hell lot more