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Knuth Releases Part Of Volume 4
Grendel Drago writes: "Donald E. Knuth has released "Pre-Fascicle 2b: Generating all permutations" from TAOCP Volume 4. It will be section 7.2.1.2 of the final work. Oh, and Volume 4 may now fill *four* subvolumes. Send in bugs, get checks for $2.56, tell the grandkids."
Any programmer worth his salt has at least thumbed through the Knuth books. The set is one of half a dozen things I'd want to see on every programmer's bookshelf, and possibly even at the top of that list.
Knuth's getting on in years. Let's all pray/hope/whatever that he makes it through the remaining volumes. If not, it'll be a major loss.
Note plural. No?
"Donald E. Knuth has released "Pre-Fascicle 2b: Generating all permutations" from TAOCP Volume 4. It will be section 7.2.1.2 of the final work. Oh, and Volume 4 may now fill *four* subvolumes. Send in bugs, get checks for $2.56, tell the grandkids."
Michael, if I said this to my grandkids they would throw me in the insane asylum for spewing gibberish.
That sentance makes *zero* sense to neophytes, and I doubt it makes sense to experienced *phytes in the industry you are talking about (What industry are you talking about? Programming? Cryptology? DNA sequencing?).
Who is Donald Knuth anyways? Wasn't he the head Animator behind the "Secrets of Nimh" cartoon & the "Dragon's Lair" & "Space Quest" video games?
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
"If you think you're a really good programmer,...read [Knuth's] Art of Computer Programming....You should definitely send me a resume if you can read the whole thing." -- Bill Gates :)
From amazon.
TAOCP has got to be one of the greatest examples of a genius mind at work. Knuth's work should be placed in the same echelon as Shakespear, Chaucer, and Hemingway.
-Vic
I found the news just above the 2b announcement to be a bit more interesting.
Evidently the random number generator ran_array / RNARRAY from Volume 2 had some problems. As I read it, if one seed is used many times, it would produce numbers that passed randomness tests; but one user tried many different seeds for only a few generations - which began to fail randomness tests.
The remarkable thing Knuth noted was that two different methods of fixing it were found by Richard Brent. The first was to discard the first 2000 numbers; the other was just basic improvement of the initialization of the algorithm.
I'm very curious as to why this is; my understanding of seminumerical theory is limited to what I've read in Knuth, but I'm still very interested in the causes of this problem.
Dude, I'm going to have to take the blame for that one. You'll notice that that text was italicized, and hence came from my submission.
Let's expand this a bit. Don Knuth sends $2.56 (a ``hexadecimal dollar'') for each bug so found. This money is sent in check form. No one in their right mind would actually cash them, especially since Knuth is getting on in years. (Note that he's just celebrated his millionth birthday---in base 2, of course.) I have two checks from Knuth (though for ``useful suggestions'', worth but thirty-two cents apiece), and they are possibly my most prized possessions.
And that's ``Don Bluth''. Not ``Don Knuth''. Though they're both rather devout men, that's where the similarities end, unless Don Bluth plays the organ...
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
You're thinking of bugs in TeX and METAFONT. Those are currently worth $327.68 apiece, and (I think) will continue to occasionally double so long as Knuth is alive. (Beyond that, any bug is classified as a feature.) Bugs in the books have always been worth $2.56.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
It's not on the main page. The casual reader doesn't see it. I didn't even know it had been accepted until I looked at my user-info page.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Richard M. Stallman has requested that this post be renamed "GNUth Releases Part of Volume 4" and that the book be referred to as "GNUth's 'The Art of Computer Programming'". Says RMS, "Clearly this system of many eyes viewing the pre-releases to remove bugs reflects a major benefit of open source. To say anything but 'GNUth' would be to ignore this fact."
Move on. There's nothing to see here.
Damn, that's good. Except it'd be pronounced "ga-NOOTH".
*snapplause*[*].
-grendel drago
[*] ``Snapplause'' is the sound of scads of people snapping their fingers in approval, Beatnik-style.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Duh! Let's face it, most of the folks here aren't even sysadmins, they're wannabe sysadmins. Installing a Linux distro at home on a x86 and even networking your house with it doesn't make you a real (good) sysadmin. It's a great learning experience, but that's about it.
As far as the math goes, most programmers I've met aren't real strong in math. But then, most of the programmers I know do (and most of the programming I do) straight-up business applications. If there's any math in there, it usually gets handed to you by an accountant/actuary/whomever with about a ream of documentation. That's just the reality of it for math skills. It's much more important that I be able to manage very complex systems and keep my soft skills strong. Those I use every day.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Stop taking shots at the proto-typical "VB programmer". For starters, we have feelings too. Secondly, most of us who use VB and other dumbed-down tools at work do so for two reasons:
1. Our employer requires it.
2. It lets us get things done very quickly.
But I suppose you think everything should be written in C right? Where's my freedom of choice in that?!
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
In another posting in another discussion, I suggested that top-level articles be subject to moderation, with all the gimmicks that apply.
:+{
I was mod'ded up twice, then mod'ded down twice.
Net result: No one will see the idea.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
to use and enjoy?