Somewhere around chapter 6 I followed the exercise and did my first quantum mechanics calculation, and it felt great. In fact, the first time I tried going through it, I felt that I had messed up. The book had made me familiar enough with the subject that I could FEEL my mistake. Sure enough, I had used the wrong eigenvalues. I went through a second time and the result made a lot more sense.<br><br>I will never be a professional physicist, but quantum weirdness comes up in the most interesting conversations, so learning enough of the math to talk about the basics with people (or call people on their BS) really appealed to me. Also, Black Hole War made me a big fan of Susskind.