Thursday, March 11, 2010

quantum analogy


Image source here.

"A person hides a ball in a cabinet with a million drawers. How many drawers do you have to open before you find the ball? You might get lucky and find it in the first drawer you open. Or you may not find it until you've opened the last one. But, on average, it will take a person half a million peeks to find the ball. A quantum computer can perform the same search by looking into only 1,000 drawers."
- Globe and Mail article here.