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Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP

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Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP

#61

Post by wglb »

kragen wrote: post #54
wglb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Aaron was very young during the Mark Williams years. I worked there for six years. I don’t think he visited the office during its heyday. So yes long after MWC.

Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP

#62

Post by zoky »

rnewme wrote: post #52
zoky wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I wouldn’t have seriously asked him for a selfie while we were both trying to get through passport control after a 12-hour flight. It’s just a little bit of a bummer that I have no way of confirming that I actually did randomly run into Donald-Freaking-Knuth in the Munich airport. Doubly so because most people who I relate this story to have absolutely no clue who Donald-Freaking-Knuth even is, so it’s just completely lost on them.

Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP

#63

Post by pests »

ozzmotik wrote: post #60
pests wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oops, you are correct. Thank you.

Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP

#64

Post by abhgh »

oefrha wrote: post #50
abhgh wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have mentioned this elsewhere online but I was once attending a talk in the computer history museum for which I had turned up early. An elderly gentleman took his seat right before me - it took me a while to process that it was Knuth (in reality, it was less to do with processing and more with accepting!). Somewhat recently we spotted him at a Hitchcock movie festival at Palo Alto, which my wife and I were attendin…

Back when I was at Stanford a decade ago, I spotted him biking to/from Green Library quite a few times. You can probably run into him with some regularity if you make a habit of going to said library, assuming his routine hasn’t changed much ;)

Oh thats a cool fact to know! Thanks.

Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP

#65

Post by kragen »

wglb wrote: post #61
kragen wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Aaron was very young during the Mark Williams years. I worked there for six years. I don’t think he visited the office during its heyday. So yes long after MWC.

Thank you! Did his father write code?

Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP

#66

Post by wglb »

kragen wrote: post #65
wglb wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aaron was very young during the Mark Williams years. I worked there for six years. I don’t think he visited the office during its heyday. So yes long after MWC.

Thank you! Did his father write code?

Not very much. There were a handful of Waterloo kids that are next level programmers.

Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP

#67

Post by wglb »

nyrikki wrote: post #57
wglb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

I double checked my latest volume and it does the foldout. My error

Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP

#68

Post by wglb »

wglb wrote: post #43
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…

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 mistaken about the foldout. It is in both versions. My error.
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