Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Got a Knuth Check for 0x$3.00

nickdrozd.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 149 posts

Re: I Got a Knuth Check for 0x$3.00

#51

Post by Tomte »

I'm quite proud to have found an error on page arabic one. In the first sentence. The very first word. Not a typographical error.

Nobody can claim he did not read that far.

I still believe I should have gotten a cheque for my bug report that "the programs are in the public domain" or similar wording on the back cover of the MMIX book is clearly wrong, since the copyright notices assert copyright, but Knuth dismissed that along the lines of "I'm not a Stallman disciple". Even though "public domain" has a clear legal meaning. Oh well, whatever, I've got 0x$1.20, that's enough.

Re: I Got a Knuth Check for 0x$3.00

#52

Post by aasasd »

ehsankia wrote: post #45
anderspitman wrote: post #26

Interesting. I have a 1973 (1st edition?) copy of Sorting and Searching I picked up at a book sale a couple years ago. In that version chapter 6 starts on page 389, and the typo is not there. I guess it was introduced later.

I'm curious, unlike the other two, wouldn't that typo be caught by any sort of automatic grammar checker? Couldn't anyone looking for a Knuth Check just load the text into a decent checker and go through the suggestions to find a valid one?

It's probably difficult to deal with a type checker on a programming and math book.

Re: I Got a Knuth Check for 0x$3.00

#53

Post by flensortow »

I got two (real) checks from him from the newly re-typeset first volume in the late 90s. Someone else did a bunch of the typesetting work and it was relatively sloppy so I managed to notice them from relatively casual reading.

Cashed both checks.

Re: I Got a Knuth Check for 0x$3.00

#54

Post by mrob »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #25
jaredsohn wrote: post #16

Does the algorithm described for finding a number in an unsorted array using minimal checks really work? Probably is addressed more in the book but didn't see my concerns in the post. The algorithm I am referring to is: " 1. Check if the current item is the desired one. If it is, return success if the pointer is within the array bound and return failure if it isn’t; otherwise 2. Increment the pointer and continue. "…

> Does the algorithm described for finding a number in an unsorted array using minimal checks really work? Probably is addressed more in the book but didn't see my concerns in the post. > I think it assumes that all values will be found in memory somewhere That assumption is not made; the post does cover this. You left out the beginning of the algorithm: > A more clever search algorithm can do it with just one bound…

>It's not clear to me how you're supposed to "tack the item on to the end of the array", though. That's not an operation arrays naturally support.

It's a small change to avoid the append. First check the final array item separately, and return success if it matches. If it doesn't match, overwrite the final array item with the desired item, and continue as before except this time checking if you're within array bound - 1.

Re: I Got a Knuth Check for 0x$3.00

#55

Post by blub »

hackermailman wrote: post #24

Any published authors here? I once went through a cheaper international edition of a large computer science text, and built a massive errata of all the mistakes (primarily found in the exercises) then submitted it to the authors who basically told me 'Thanks but we don't give a shit about that version, only the US edition'. Any reason there would be that many mistakes in the international version? Does Pearson publis…

The international edition of that book costs almost 1/4th of the US edition and is still pretty expensive as books go.

Re: I Got a Knuth Check for 0x$3.00

#56

Post by giancarlostoro »

hackermailman wrote: post #24

Any published authors here? I once went through a cheaper international edition of a large computer science text, and built a massive errata of all the mistakes (primarily found in the exercises) then submitted it to the authors who basically told me 'Thanks but we don't give a shit about that version, only the US edition'. Any reason there would be that many mistakes in the international version? Does Pearson publis…

It likely means they dont have a direct contract with the authors and you are better off contacting them directly instead.

Re: I Got a Knuth Check for 0x$3.00

#57

Post by userbinator »

hackermailman wrote: post #24

Any published authors here? I once went through a cheaper international edition of a large computer science text, and built a massive errata of all the mistakes (primarily found in the exercises) then submitted it to the authors who basically told me 'Thanks but we don't give a shit about that version, only the US edition'. Any reason there would be that many mistakes in the international version? Does Pearson publis…

That book seems quite highly recommended but I remember glancing through it and even the US edition had lots of seemingly random but consistent capitalisation errors in the code examples, like someone had autocorrect/autoformat turned on throughout, which IMHO is enough to make me not recommend it --- it's already hard enough for a beginner to use correct code, nevermind code with such errors.

Re: I Got a Knuth Check for 0x$3.00

#58

Post by nickdrozd »

heinrichf wrote: post #33

> This post alone is sure to contain several typos (no rewards for finding them though) [...] > It mostly applies to [techinical] errors,

Fixed! Unfortunately, somebody beat you to it, so you wouldn't receive a reward check even I were sending them out, which, to reiterate, I'm not :)

Re: I Got a Knuth Check for 0x$3.00

#60

Post by MRD85 »

mrob wrote: post #54
thaumasiotes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does the algorithm described for finding a number in an unsorted array using minimal checks really work? Probably is addressed more in the book but didn't see my concerns in the post. > I think it assumes that all values will be found in memory somewhere That assumption is not made; the post does cover this. You left out the beginning of the algorithm: > A more clever search algorithm can do it with just one bound…

>It's not clear to me how you're supposed to "tack the item on to the end of the array", though. That's not an operation arrays naturally support. It's a small change to avoid the append. First check the final array item separately, and return success if it matches. If it doesn't match, overwrite the final array item with the desired item, and continue as before except this time checking if you're within array bound…

Do most array structures have a pointer to last element? Or similarly useful do they track length?
Post reply on HN