Slashdot Mirror


Knuth Previews New Math Section For 'The Art of Computer Programming' (stanford.edu)

In 1962, 24-year-old Donald Knuth began writing The Art of Computer Programming -- and 55 years later, he's still working on it. An anonymous reader quotes Knuth's web site at Stanford: Volume 4B will begin with a special section called 'Mathematical Preliminaries Redux', which extends the 'Mathematical Preliminaries' of Section 1.2 in Volume 1 to things that I didn't know about in the 1960s. Most of this new material deals with probabilities and expectations of random events; there's also an introduction to the theory of martingales.

You can have a sneak preview by looking at the current draft of pre-fascicle 5a (52 pages), last updated 18 January 2017. As usual, rewards will be given to whoever is first to find and report errors or to make valuable suggestions. I'm particularly interested in receiving feedback about the exercises (of which there are 125) and their answers (of which there are 125).

Over the years Knuth gave out over $20,000 in rewards, though most people didn't cash his highly-coveted "hexadecimal checks", and in 2008 Knuth switched to honorary "hexadecimal certificates". In 2014 Knuth complained about the "dumbing down" of computer science history, and his standards remain high. In his most-recent update, 79-year-old Knuth reminds readers that "There's stuff in here that isn't in Wikipedia yet!"

3 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. The "math" of AOCP very important in real world by perpenso · · Score: 5, Informative

    Donald Knuth is an elitist. It is not necessary to have a background in mathematics to write software. I taught myself PHP and I certainly don't have any kind of mathematics background whatsoever. It isn't dumbing down as he claims. It's about creating opportunities. If you can code and you can do it well without mathematics, so be it. The math side is for those that want to do research. I work in the real world ....

    In the "Art of Computer Programming" context mathematics includes various things related to the performance of algorithms (code). Such things are useful, even essential, well beyond the domain of research, in many areas of the real world of software development (coding).

  2. PHP? That's software engineering nowdays? by Snotnose · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've never looked at PHP. I have done javascript/ecmascript. A pathetic pile of shit called a language. I've heard PHP is worse than ecmascript, but as I've never done PHP I don't really know.

    So, you taught yourself PHP and can call whatsisname irrelevant?

    I can only hope I can somehow track your screen name to the name on your resume and get it shitcanned before it hits my desk.

    bought Knuth's 3 books in the 80s

    invaluable

    retired, haven't bought any of his newer books

  3. Re:More accessible alternatives? by HiThere · · Score: 3, Informative

    It depends on exactly what you are after. Sedgewick has/had a few books called "Algorithms in C++/Pascal/??" that was decent light coverage. "Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs" by Wirth is pretty good, but I don't think it was ever translated out of Pascal. And the current modern approach is Google (I only recommend that one as a supplement).

    P.S.: One of the Sedgewick books had several errors in the algorithms, so be sure you don't get the first edition.

    --

    I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.