Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP
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Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP
#2Nice! 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....
Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP
#3The inventor of the bug bounty.
Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP
#4I have a Knuth cheque from back when he sent out real cheques. Or at least I did; for some reason I decided that cashing it was a good idea and so I have his note back to me and a photocopy of the actual cheque.
Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP
#5Nice! 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.
Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP
#6I have a Knuth cheque from back when he sent out real cheques. Or at least I did; for some reason I decided that cashing it was a good idea and so I have his note back to me and a photocopy of the actual cheque.
What error did you find?
Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP
#7I have a Knuth cheque from back when he sent out real cheques. Or at least I did; for some reason I decided that cashing it was a good idea and so I have his note back to me and a photocopy of the actual cheque.
Aren't the cheques for $2.56?
Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP
#8A 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!"
- put books on shelf in office - never look at them again
This has worked for me, though I must admit that Searching & Sorting and stuff about random numbers are pretty good.
I got my copies free from Addison Wesley for doing some book reviews for them - not reviewing Knuth, needless to say!
Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP
#9Great 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 0x20¢) rather than "errors" (worth 0x$1.00).
2. Knuth is pretty generous with credit -- if your suggestion leads him to find an error, you get credit for the error. The author here said that some defined variables went unused. Knuth pointed out that those variables were in fact used in an exercise. However, in looking this up he noticed a variable-related error in that exercise. Author is credited with 0x$1.00!
3. Exercises are more likely to contain errors and infelicities than the main text. And there are an awful lot of exercises.
4. Knuth includes a whole bunch of stuff in his books that is not related to CS. Lots of weird trivia and references. This stuff is more likely to be wrong than the main text. For example, Knuth mentions "icosahedral objects inscribed with Greek letters" and includes a reference to an article in the Bulletin de l’Institut français du Caire. But the author points out that the article is actually in the Bulletin de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale. Whoops! 0x$1.00 for you!
Re: Discovering errors in Donald Knuth's TAOCP
#10Great 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.