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Interesting - I do this but I learned the skill from sight reading music scores - you have to be playing several bars behind what you’re reading so the skill is in going into autopilot with your fingers as you read. No small coincidence then that Knuth is an organist
> No small coincidence then that Knuth is an organist Also great on the harpsichord and piano.
Note that, to get an idea of the contents, you can see the previously published fascicles, and earlier drafts online (pre-fascicles): • Mathematical Preliminaries Redux: https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/fasc5a.ps.gz • 7.2.2 Introduction to Backtracking: https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/fasc5b.ps.gz • 7.2.2.1 Dancing Links: https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/fasc5c.ps.gz • 7.2.2.2 Satisfiability: https://cs.stanford.edu/~knut…
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I for one would feel privileged to get to meet him.
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Writing a decent Sudoku solver takes just a few hours... I did this last year in order to refresh my memory on how Ruby worked. Reading TAOCP would take a few more hours than that.
Luckily, you are more than a few hours from death.
[0] https://cs.stanford.edu/content/contacting-donald-knuth/news...
A math noobie here: I want to learn the TAOCP but the pre-req is Concrete Mathematics which I also find hard--it seems almost cryptic. Any ideas for a book before Concrete Mathematics? Thanks in advance.
That apart, I (and Knuth) recommend just skipping the math parts when they get hard. You can always come back to them later if you're interested.
This is what he says in the preface to Vol 1 (p. viii):
> A few words are in order about the mathematical content of this set of books. The material has been organized so that persons with no more than a knowledge of high-school algebra may read it, skimming briefly over the more mathematical portions; yet a reader who is mathematically inclined will learn about many interesting mathematical techniques related to discrete mathematics. This dual level of presentation has been achieved […] also by arranging most sections so that the main mathematical results are stated before their proofs. […]
> A reader who is interested primarily in programming rather than in the associated mathematics may stop reading most sections as soon as the mathematics becomes recognizably difficult. On the other hand, a mathematically oriented reader will find a wealth of interesting material collected here. Much of the published mathematics about computer programming has been faulty, and one of the purposes of this book is to instruct readers in proper mathematical approaches to this subject. Since I profess to be a mathematician, it is my duty to maintain mathematical integrity as well as I can.
A few years ago I had the pleasure of meeting Knuth in his home, my wife was doing some photography for him. He took me to his room and showed me his setup, he was researching Soduku algorithms at the time. His hands were blisteringly quick, moving between EMacs panes, triggering evaluations and printing of results, as fast as any 20 year old. In his 80s , he hasn’t seemed to suffer any mental decline. I started talk…
Note that, to get an idea of the contents, you can see the previously published fascicles, and earlier drafts online (pre-fascicles): • Mathematical Preliminaries Redux: https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/fasc5a.ps.gz • 7.2.2 Introduction to Backtracking: https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/fasc5b.ps.gz • 7.2.2.1 Dancing Links: https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/fasc5c.ps.gz • 7.2.2.2 Satisfiability: https://cs.stanford.edu/~knut…
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“Is that a copy of Knuth?” She homes in on the top shelf. “Hang on — volume four? But he only finished the first three volumes in that series! Volume four’s been overdue for the past twenty years!”
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Pumsae for the tae-kwon-do folks. It is awesome.
You just gave me flashbacks to doing all eight taegeuk pumsae for my black belt grading