The Quantum Kitchen
The exciting thing is getting to cook
I really like the analogy of algorithms as recipes. I think it’s one of the few effective analogies out there, in the sense that most people have a good feel for the reference point, and the mapping between the algorithms and recipes is reasonably tight.
We can extend the analogy to quantum computing. Other people have made similar connections in the past (here, here, here, and here).
In this post, I take a different approach.
Extending the algorithm-as-recipe analogy
If an algorithm is like a recipe, then we can think of the inputs to the algorithm as ingredients in the recipe. An algorithm also has operations the same way that a recipe has techniques (e.g. grate this, mix these two things together, bake it all for 30 mins). And an algorithm is usually executed on a computer, the same way that a recipe is usually executed in a kitchen.
Running an algorithm produces an output, much like following a recipe produces a dish. But a dish on its own isn’t necessarily a meal. A meal is what you get when that dish is combined with other dishes, served for a particular purpose, and eaten (maybe a stretch by this point, but stay with me). In the same way, an application is what happens when the output of an algorithm is used as part of a broader workflow to do something meaningful.
We can summarize the mapping as follows:
recipe ↔ algorithm
ingredients ↔ inputs
techniques ↔ operations
kitchen ↔ computer
dish ↔ output
meal ↔ application
A standard kitchen, like the one you cook in, obeys the laws of classical physics.1
But now imagine that your kitchen is a quantum kitchen.
