would like to read, but the site uses some clownflare alternative, that just like clownflare tries to verify my browser (palemoon), and then comes to the conclusion that my browser isn't a browser.
Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP
51–60 of 68 posts
Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP
#52My Knuth checks amount to a total account balance of 0x$b.40 at his "Bank of San Seriffe" (the equivalent of eleven "errors" and two "suggestions") — mostly accumulated over a short period several years ago. Previously, I had the impression that Knuth was some magical figure of perfection. What I realized was that the truth was more surprising: he makes the same kinds and the same frequency of errors as anyone else (…
> he makes the same kinds and the same frequency of errors as anyone else Putting this here because I don’t know where else to tell this story and I simply have to share: I flew into Munich a few months ago, and since I have an EU passport I was able to use the shorter self-scan line for EU citizens at passport control. In front of me was an older couple who was having trouble with getting their passports to scan. I…
At risk of sounding negative, I'm glad you didn't get to pester old man with a selfie.
Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
For the lazy, the word is: "infinitely"
Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP
#54A 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…
When I bought the first volume in about 1969, I vowed to read that one, and then each one that followed. However, that is yet to come to pass. However, when we at Mark Williams Company writing the floating point routines for the C compiler ( https://winworldpc.com/product/mark-williams-letsc/3x ), we were heavily reading Chapter 4, particularly on long division. Also did spend some time in the Random Number generatio…
Hey, I have a question about the Mark Williams Company. I understand it was founded by Aaron Swartz's father. Did he work on the programming? Did Aaron spend time around the office? I'm curious how Aaron first got involved in programming, which I think was probably long after the company.
Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP
#55My Knuth checks amount to a total account balance of 0x$b.40 at his "Bank of San Seriffe" (the equivalent of eleven "errors" and two "suggestions") — mostly accumulated over a short period several years ago. Previously, I had the impression that Knuth was some magical figure of perfection. What I realized was that the truth was more surprising: he makes the same kinds and the same frequency of errors as anyone else (…
> he makes the same kinds and the same frequency of errors as anyone else Putting this here because I don’t know where else to tell this story and I simply have to share: I flew into Munich a few months ago, and since I have an EU passport I was able to use the shorter self-scan line for EU citizens at passport control. In front of me was an older couple who was having trouble with getting their passports to scan. I…
I attended one of his MMIX lectures in Munich two decades ago and he mentioned that he was going to visit a friend later, so I guess he might have contacts in Munich.
Speaking of errors, in the lecture he once forgot to save a file in Emacs and was confused about the compilation result briefly. Made him very relatable.
Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP
#56Another top story on HN right now is how LLMs are finding errors in research papers. Maybe an LLM winning a Knuth bug bounty is a milestone on the path towards “AGI”?
AGI will be achieved when Knuth + LLMs work to finish TAOCP with no errors.
Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP
#57A 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…
When I bought the first volume in about 1969, I vowed to read that one, and then each one that followed. However, that is yet to come to pass. However, when we at Mark Williams Company writing the floating point routines for the C compiler ( https://winworldpc.com/product/mark-williams-letsc/3x ), we were heavily reading Chapter 4, particularly on long division. Also did spend some time in the Random Number generatio…
I was gifted the new set this last Christmas after losing my old versions in a fire, the fold out pages are there in the latest release.
Edited to add: Amazon often has fake or at least printed with lower quality/cost versions. It was hard to find a real copy of his concrete math book when I was searching. The 'i18n' edition is printed on the cheapest of cheap paper for that book. I suspect that is related. But the fan-out pages are in the sorting volume.
#2 Vol 3 is on the second edition, with the tape merge fanout between pages 338 and 339. So it would be a particular printing that didn't have it.
Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP
#58"he decided against breaking up Algorithm X between different pages"
He should have used TeX ;) I've heard handles such layout problems automatically.
Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP
#59A 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 just bought the whole set
and just did chapter one, will probably not keep up with doing all the assignments but I indend to at least skim them and get a rough feel to where I can find stuff if I ever need it.
Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Routing and account numbers at the bottom of a check are semi-private and nefarious actors can abuse them. See the movie/book Catch Me If You Can about Frank Abigail.
that's Abagnale, I believe.