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Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP

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Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP

#11

Post by WillAdams »

dmoy wrote: post #5
WillAdams wrote: post #2

Nice! When I reported an error and a point of improvement in _Digital Typography_ the address was printed and glued on, not hand-written, which somewhat detracts from the display of the check/envelope. Need to find another error so I can get an account....

This makes me feel less bad about also not being able to figure out my printer's address printing function. Like I know it is capable. I know how to set up the hand feed for it (and I successfully do that for thicker paper). And ostensibly I know the right dimensions and how to line it up in a PDF. But then it's just failure after failure, and I go back to cut and paste or handwrite.

Really miss poste.app on my NeXT Cube, which was a small app/service which did nothing but print a selected address onto a hand-fed envelope.

Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP

#13

Post by jks »

gblargg wrote: post #12

Does the bank really read the amounts as hexadecimal?

He used to send out real cheques for $2.56 but apparently they contained codes that could be used to transfer money out of his account in excess of the sum of the cheque. Now he uses the made-up Bank of San Serriffe, which naturally understands hexadecimal.

https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/news08.html

Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP

#14

Post by dalke »

nickdrozd wrote: post #9

Great post. Some general takeaways for people who want Knuth checks: 1. You are unlikely to find errors in the algorithms themselves, especially if they've been officially published. You might find some infelicities, but these are not counted as full errors. For example, the author here found some confusing-but-not-wrong comments about local variables and unused registers. These are counted as "suggestions" (worth 0x…

I found an error in a published version of TAOCP, 2nd edition I think, with improvements on Sieve of Eratosthenes. I was so excited, then found it was already listed in the errata.

I later got a check for identifying a minor issue with the early history of superimposed coding. I happen to have copies of the relevant patent case containing examples predating Mooers' randomized superimposed coding.

("Happened to" because I had visited the Mooers archive at the Charles Babbage Institute in Minnesota to research some of the early history of chemical information management. Mooers is one of the "fathers" of information retrieval, and in fact coined the term "information retrieval" at a chemistry conference.)

Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP

#15

Post by jll29 »

I've emailed DEK to point out that the first person to break Enigma was not actually Alan M. Turing (as stated in one of the recent pre-fascicles) but the Polish mathematician Marian Rejewski (Turing's contribution was to automate the task, which was important because the rotors/settings were reconfigured by the German Wehrmacht every morning).

Bletchley Park now has a prominent bust of Rejewski that credits his accomplishment. The Polish wisely passed on their knowledge to the British to keep the intel safe, because they expected a German invasion.

On another note, I hope Professor Knuth has a continuity plan in place that ensures that his book series gets completed despite his advanced age (I'm worried about that, but tact prohibited me from asking, of course).

Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP

#16

Post by WillAdams »

jll29 wrote: post #15

I've emailed DEK to point out that the first person to break Enigma was not actually Alan M. Turing (as stated in one of the recent pre-fascicles) but the Polish mathematician Marian Rejewski (Turing's contribution was to automate the task, which was important because the rotors/settings were reconfigured by the German Wehrmacht every morning). Bletchley Park now has a prominent bust of Rejewski that credits his acco…

Given his quite healthy lifestyle, I believe that we should be okay on that latter front --- I certainly hope so.

Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP

#17

Post by WillAdams »

zabzonk wrote: post #8

A long while back I wrote an answer on Stack Overflow to a question that asked "How to read TAOCP?" my answer looked something like this: - don't read them - get all the books, put them in a bin bag and shake vigorously with some lumps of coal, to give them that "used" look - go through the books, underline things at random and make notes (also at random) in the margin such as "how true", or even better "wrong!" - pu…

I have worked with two programmers who had well-thumbed copies of TAoCP on their shelves which each had actually read (one was the only other person I've met outside of a TeX conference who had a reward check) --- to this day, I've not worked with better devs.

Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP

#19

Post by irrational »

WillAdams wrote: post #16
jll29 wrote: post #15

I've emailed DEK to point out that the first person to break Enigma was not actually Alan M. Turing (as stated in one of the recent pre-fascicles) but the Polish mathematician Marian Rejewski (Turing's contribution was to automate the task, which was important because the rotors/settings were reconfigured by the German Wehrmacht every morning). Bletchley Park now has a prominent bust of Rejewski that credits his acco…

Given his quite healthy lifestyle, I believe that we should be okay on that latter front --- I certainly hope so.

It's not his lifestyle I'm worried about. There was a healthy youtuber who made videos about wilderness survival who was killed when he was rear ended by a drunk driver while stopped at a red light (the drunk driver, of course, survived). It's all the morons around Knuth I'm worried about.

Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP

#20

Post by eigenvalue »

Tomte wrote: post #10
nickdrozd wrote: post #9

Great post. Some general takeaways for people who want Knuth checks: 1. You are unlikely to find errors in the algorithms themselves, especially if they've been officially published. You might find some infelicities, but these are not counted as full errors. For example, the author here found some confusing-but-not-wrong comments about local variables and unused registers. These are counted as "suggestions" (worth 0x…

Don't make assumptions about what parts must have been combed through so much that there is no chance of finding annerror. I found one and got my cheque on page Arabic one in one of his books. Paragraph one. First sentence. The very first word.

Was it the word “the” instead of “a”? Trying to think what else it could even be.
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