[HN Gopher] Donald Knuth on work habits, problem solving, and ha...
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Donald Knuth on work habits, problem solving, and happiness (2020)
Author : Thursday24
Score : 310 points
Date : 2022-05-23 17:32 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (shuvomoy.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (shuvomoy.github.io)
| mooneater wrote:
| > they haven't learned the fundamental ideas of algebra
|
| I'd very much love to know exactly what Knuth considers the
| "fundamental ideas of algebra"!
| Hasz wrote:
| Perhaps the eponymous fundamental theorem of algebra is a good
| place to start.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorem_of_algebra
| thomasahle wrote:
| From the same page: "the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra is
| neither fundamental, nor a theorem of algebra"
| jacobolus wrote:
| For more on this theme, see:
| https://www.math.nyu.edu/faculty/edwardsd/carnegie.pdf
| bo1024 wrote:
| It sounds like he's just talking about using variables to solve
| equations. I think the point he's making in that section is
| just about learning a good process so you can solve harder and
| harder problems, e.g.
|
| Problem 1: Two numbers add to 100, one is 20 larger.
|
| Smart student: oh, I see, 60 and 40.
|
| Dumb student Knuth: x + y = 100 and x = y + 20, solves to x=60,
| y=40.
|
| ..
|
| Problem 2: Four numbers sum to 1024, one is half the sum of the
| other three less 17, one of the others...
|
| Smart student: uh, I don't see the answer.
|
| Dumb student Knuth: w + x + y + z = 1024, w = (x + y + z)/2 -
| 17, ... solved it.
| anthk wrote:
| x + y = 100
|
| x - y = 20
|
| 2x + y - y = 120
|
| 2x = 120
|
| x = 60
|
| y = 100 - x
|
| y = 40.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Algebra goes so much deeper than this. I had so much trouble
| with my compilers class because my professor expressed all
| the ideas and principles of compilation using algebra.
|
| So I second OP's comment - I wish there were a course one
| could take on algebra itself - not merely numeric expressions
| with variables.
| kenjackson wrote:
| What are the principles of compilation using algebra?
| bo1024 wrote:
| Yes of course it does and Knuth is well aware (as am I to a
| lesser extent), but I'm just saying I don't think it's
| relevant to the point he's making here.
| dllthomas wrote:
| > I wish there were a course one could take on algebra
| itself
|
| Depending a little on just what you mean, that's likely the
| upper-division undergraduate math department course called
| "Algebra" at most universities. Groups and rings and such.
| [deleted]
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| I thought of that, but it sounded like it was just
| studying particular mathematical structures -- not
| learning "how to read arbitrary algebraic expressions".
|
| Or perhaps algebraic expressions in different
| mathematical specialties are differentiated enough to
| make knowledge about how to read a given expression
| mostly non-transferable?
| dllthomas wrote:
| Ah, to my mind "algebra" is the structure. It sounds like
| you want a survey of mathematical notation?
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > the upper-division undergraduate math department course
| called "Algebra"
|
| And be careful what you wish for - the way eighth-grade
| algebra hurt your brain when you were 13 will be nothing
| compared to the way abstract algebra will hurt your brain
| when you're 20.
| dllthomas wrote:
| ... in a good way.
|
| I liked "high school" algebra okay, but group theory was
| _fun_ , even if homework was sometimes spending hours and
| pages to wind up with a 10 line proof.
| anthk wrote:
| In my case abstract algebra was much easier to grasp than
| polynomials with no context.
| dboreham wrote:
| After reading the relevant article section, I'd guess he's
| talking about the idea that problems can be mapped onto
| mathematical structures, allowing use of pre-known rules within
| said structure, for transformation and identity and so on, such
| that the problem can then be solved. He's saying that for
| simple problems if you're clever you can intuit the solution
| without that mapping/manipulation/solve process, but as a
| result you can never see how to solve more complex problems.
| Implication being that if you had been slightly less smart,
| you'd end up understanding mathematical structure earlier in
| life, with associated benefits in terms of success in certain
| fields. Like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_algebra
| JoshCole wrote:
| > it's selfish to keep beautiful discoveries a secret.
|
| I found a beautiful thing recently and planned to do a write-up
| on it eventually, but I know I might get distracted. So I'll
| share the beauty here since I don't want to be selfish!
|
| In K means clustering you know you've stabilized if centers t =
| centers (t-1). Stabilization has occurred because no clusters
| were reassigned during the lloyd iteration. People already know
| this. In many implementations of k means clustering you'll find
| this check in the body of the loop as a special case which means
| the loop should end. You can't have this as the condition of the
| while loop because you don't yet have a centers t-1 on your first
| loop. Actually you can by supposing a hypothetical all nil
| cluster definition prior to initialization, but people don't tend
| to do that. That failure to do that is ugly in the same way that
| Linus refers to code which uses special casing as being ugly. It
| doesn't apply the same procedure to every iteration. They should
| do that and it would make the code more beautiful. However, that
| is not my discovery, but just a preference for beauty and
| consistency.
|
| What I noticed is that the equality check is actually giving you
| a bitset that tells you whether any of the centers was changed.
| This is a more general idea than just telling you that you can
| stop because you are done. It is telling you /why/ you aren't
| done. It is also deeply informative about the problem you are
| solving in a way that helps the computation to be done more
| efficiently. I want to show it being deeply informative. So I'll
| touch on that briefly and then we can revisit the simplicity.
|
| Clusters being reassigned tells you the general location that
| have the potential to need future reassignment. For example, in
| the range of 1 to a 1,000,000 on a 1d line if a cluster at 10
| moves, but there is a cluster at 500, then you know you don't
| need to look at reassignment for any cluster above 500. I mean
| this in two sense. One is that nothing in clusters past the 500
| can change. So you don't need to look at them. The other is that
| clusters past the 500 cluster can't even be nearer. So you don't
| have to find the pairwise distance to them. In the assignment
| stage of the lloyd iteration you don't even need to look at
| everything above 500. So you not only reduce the amount you need
| to look at in the N dataset items. You also reduce the number of
| k clusters centers you need to compare them to. In the 1 to
| 1,000,000 domain example for stuff below 500 that is probably
| going to be more than 99% of your data that you can skip and the
| vast majority of clusters that you don't even to need to check
| distance for.
|
| Returning to the simplicity discussion it means you can write the
| loop without the special casing. Instead of a break when
| stabilization has occurred you have a selection criteria function
| which tells you the selection criteria for that step of the lloyd
| iteration. Obviously at the initialization stage we went from no
| definitions to k definitions. So the selection criteria function
| is well defined even for the very first iteration on an intuitive
| level.
|
| Why do I find this beautiful? Well, we can not only eliminate the
| special casing, which is beautiful on its own, but we can
| rephrase each iteration in terms of a selection criteria
| generated by that equality check! We are never special casing;
| the reason we stopped was always because the selection criteria
| was the empty set. We just didn't think of it that way, because
| we didn't phrase the update step in terms of the generation of a
| selection criteria for updates.
|
| And when you do, suddenly it becomes obvious how to do certain
| parallelizations because your selection strategy tells you where
| to kick off another refinement iteration. And /locality/ in a
| dimensional space is determining where the updates get passed. I
| have this strange feeling that if we just keep pulling on this
| idea that we'll be able to eliminate the need for loops that
| await all cluster updates and instead express the computation in
| a massively parallel way that ends up taking advantage of the
| topological structure of the problem: I mean, clearly if you have
| two clusters that moved one at 5 and another at at 900900 you
| don't /need/ to wait for 5 to finish its refinement to know that
| it /isn't/ going to impact the next step for refinement at
| 900900, because there are so many clusters between them. So you
| should be able to proceed as if 5 cluster movement has no impact
| on 900900 cluster movement. Only if they drift closer and the
| topology differs do you have to backtrack, but since we already
| need to pass these updates through the topological structure we
| have a fairly straightforward way of declaring when it is
| appropriate to backtrack. This phrasing is really stupid for the
| toy problems that people solve in classrooms and when trying to
| understand things because of the overhead of keeping track of the
| work and the wasted work, but I have a feeling that it might be
| practical. In real massive problems you already have to pay the
| cost of keeping the work because stuff fails and you need to
| retry and in particular the geometric probability distrubition of
| failure is high enough that we just have to assume that stuff
| fails in these massive cases. So the added cost of keeping the
| work around during the computation isn't as extreme a barrier.
| It's basically optimistic massively parallelized clustering, but
| with a resolution protocol for how to handle two optimistic
| clustering runs which collide with each other, because the
| natural problem of scale forces redundancy on us effectively
| making the choice to be redundant free rather than expensive
| wasted work.
|
| Maybe nothing will come of these thoughts, but I found the first
| thought pretty and it provoked the second line of reasoning,
| which I found interesting. I'm working on a k-means clustering
| system that incorporates the good ideas from several k means
| research papers and I plan to explore these ideas in my
| implementation, but in the spirit of not hiding beautiful things,
| I hope you enjoy.
|
| Also, as an aside, these aren't completely new ideas. People have
| noticed that you can use the triangle inequality to speed up
| computation for a while and shown it to speed up computations.
| It's more of an observation of the way the looping structure can
| be seen in a non-special cased way, how that suggests ways to
| improve performance, and how it lends itself better to
| alternative control flow structures.
|
| > it's selfish to keep beautiful discoveries a secret.
|
| It would be really fun to read what others found beautiful that
| they've never heard someone else mention.
| bakul wrote:
| I think we naturally _want_ to share what we find beautiful as
| it is an expression of our joy as well as it enhances it. What
| we usually don 't want to share is what we think will be
| _profitable_.
| hintymad wrote:
| I still read TAOCP, particularly vol 4, for fun from time to
| time, but I have to admit that the days are long gone when an
| ordinary engineer needs to study algorithms in depth. The vast
| number of libraries and services are good enough that most people
| just need to know a few terms to function adequately for their
| jobs. I guess it's a good thing as it shows how robust the
| software abstractions are, in contrast to mathematics. It's just
| that I feel quite nostalgic about the countless days I spent
| understanding, proving, and implementing fundamental algorithms
| and data structures.
| mellavora wrote:
| bigcat12345678 wrote:
| The most valuable part of TAOCP, for me, is its writing.
|
| I've never read anything that is more precise or intuitive.
| TAOCP is also pleasant to read.
|
| It's the book that I go back to once a while after being
| bothered by the sloppiness in the documents and papers and many
| other written materials consumed everyday. Reading it gives a
| sense of enlightenment that regardless of all those poor
| writing, there is hope to reach the clarity that I have the
| deepest desire for.
| orlp wrote:
| My only gripe with TAOCP is its usage of MMIX.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > the days are long gone when an ordinary engineer needs to
| study algorithms in depth
|
| Except to pass the interview screens at high-profile tech
| companies?
| hintymad wrote:
| Most leetcoders simply memorize one or two solutions instead
| of studying algorithms holistically. I suspect that many
| would spend time understanding that generating gray code can
| be mapped to mixed-radix number system (nor should us anyway,
| albeit it's really really cool). Leetcode does not require
| understanding of advanced data structures either. Instead,
| it's full of clever tricks and specific solutions with which
| entry-level ACM participants are well versed.
| mhh__ wrote:
| There will always be a "higher" type of engineers who want to
| read TAOCP and similar.
|
| My issue with the books is that they're actually quite long
| winded even by what you'd expect from the tone.
|
| There's some really cool stuff in them, obviously, but I think
| they're objectively not very good textbooks for any purpose.
|
| Then again I'm coming from a background of physics rather than
| mathematics so I'm not set out for a real battle of wits when
| it comes to constructing proofs.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I think they are excellent textbooks if your goal is to learn
| all about algorithms. And by this I mean he takes these great
| tangents into slightly different derivations that lead to
| wildly different complexities. Or why somethings are actually
| ambiguous or some interesting special case.
|
| And maybe even more importantly, a great collection of
| problems to work through. I think it is actually an
| underappreciated text nowadays.
| mhh__ wrote:
| My gripe is that there is _an_ order through them that is
| an excellent textbook, but the lexical order through the
| book is usually very long winded and meanders immensely.
|
| Meandering through topics is good, but he meanders through
| style as well: sometimes he was in a mathematical mood,
| sometimes he was feeling more practical. I think it's
| better to intuit first then formalize, Knuth likes to do
| these in groups of pairs rather than a pair of groups.
|
| Knuth is not the worst at this, but the lost potential is
| the greatest in his writing.
| fossuser wrote:
| Related to your higher type of engineer: http://employees.one
| onta.edu/blechmjb/JBpages/m360/Professio...
|
| It's a good short story if you've got 20min.
| hintymad wrote:
| TAOCP is meant to be a textbook, a reference, and a
| historical account of algorithm development. I find it most
| rewarding to pick the most interesting part to me at the
| moment to read. I also ignore the MMIX code (even though I
| did work through the MMIXware book) and focus on first
| intuition, then code, and then the math that teaches me new
| ideas or new methods.
|
| I find the MMIX code less relevant to my line of work now as
| getting down to machine-level optimization requires a whole
| new different suite of tools. The ensuing optimizations on
| modern CPUs seem deviated from what the MMIX code can help.
| gralx wrote:
| Yeah, TAOCP's casual style puts me off too. Side by side with
| high watermarks in technical writing like _The C Programming
| Language_ , _Specifying Systems_ , or Loney's _Elements of
| Coordinate Geometry_ its shortcomings are pretty obvious. But
| that 's an opportunity for a clever editor to make an actual
| reference manual out of TAOCP sometime in the future.
|
| Knuth's a good, engaging writer, but TAOCP's content and
| typography are definitely better thought out than the prose.
|
| EDIT: Just remembered a BBC interview with a philosophy
| professor about Kant. Apparently Kant is criticized for being
| really verbose. The professor's retort was he sensed Kant had
| so much to say and so little time to say it that he didn't
| edit very carefully, giving it a similar kind of bloated,
| meandering quality. Even so, Kant is held up as one of the
| GOATs, because in the end it's the content that counts.
| hn-22 wrote:
| Knuth is a failed Mathematician. He basically couldn't solve the
| problem Manin gave him so he escaped to a beach. I don't think
| his guidance matters that much. I'll listen to him only when he
| has the solution.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| _Every day I look at the things that I 'm ready to do, and choose
| the one that I like the least, the one that's least fun -- the
| task that I would most like to procrastinate from doing, but for
| which I have no good reason for procrastination._
|
| I'm not sure I've seen this approach to combating procrastination
| before. I can see how it might work: once you've completed the
| thing you least wanted to do, you might feel relief that the
| distasteful task is done and you can then dive into other stuff
| without that nagging you in the back of your mind.
|
| I think I will give this a try...
| beebmam wrote:
| >In Christian churches I am least impressed by a sermon that
| talks about how marvelous heaven is going to be at the end. To me
| that's not the message of Christianity. The message is about how
| to live now, not that we should live in some particular way
| because there's going to be pie in the sky some day. The end
| means almost nothing to me. I am glad it's there, but I don't see
| it as much of a motivating force, if any. I mean, it's the
| journey that's important.
|
| I find this quite sad. In the US, I have never known a kind
| Christianity that espoused these ideas. The end, either heaven or
| hell (or purgatory), is everything to Christianity in the US, in
| my experience. Perhaps it used to be different here.
| christophilus wrote:
| Depends on what flavor of Christianity you adhere to. I follow
| the Catholic mystical tradition which doesn't really focus on
| pie in the sky, but rather on the purpose of being, which is to
| become one with the divine-- a purpose which doesn't have to
| wait for the afterlife.
| hammock wrote:
| Came here to say this. One of the goals of a Christian life
| is to manifest heaven on Earth.
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| The interpretation that always interested me was that, when
| speaking of heaven, Jesus was referring to an enlightened
| state of mind and way of living here on earth, not some
| magical place you go when you die. It's obvious to anyone
| that you can create hell on earth without much effort; I
| like to think we can create heaven as well.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > The end, either heaven or hell (or purgatory), is everything
| to Christianity in the US
|
| Yes, unfortunately this is the case in the dominant US
| expression of Christianity, Evangelicalism. But I think it's
| changing in some quarters. I've heard several sermons lately
| about how "eternal life" starts right here on earth. Check out
| The Bible Project's video on the meaning of Eternal Life [1]
|
| I think The Bible Project is kind of on the vanguard of this
| movement within Evangelicalism (I think they're still
| theologically Evangelical, but maybe they'd shy away from using
| the term now since it's become loaded with political baggage),
| I wouldn't necessarily call it "progressive" but it's looking
| deeply into biblical interpretation and subtly calling out the
| predominate Evangelical interpretations.
|
| Also, Check out NT Wright's "Surprised by Hope". He's coming
| from an Anglican perspective with an eschatology that predates
| the Evangelical "Left Behind" narrative.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCOycIMyJZM
| dhosek wrote:
| In evangelical Christianity, there is also the Red Letter
| Christians movement https://www.redletterchristians.org which
| is very much a minority movement, but that I would hope is
| growing.1
|
| [?]
|
| 1. I say this, though as an outsider, being a Catholic. We
| Catholics have our own battles between those who would make
| Catholicism all about sex and those who think that maybe it
| should be concerned with a bit more than that.
| lliamander wrote:
| This looks more like political agitprop and a rehash of the
| social gospel movement of the early 20th century than a
| serious biblical exegesis.
| theonething wrote:
| > serious biblical exegesis
|
| We (Christians) need this desperately in this day and
| age.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| It's hard to say whether these movements (Like Redletter
| Christians) still consider themselves Evangelical - at
| least in the current sense of the word. There's a huge
| movement of (mostly younger) people leaving Evangelicalism
| right now because the term 'Evangelical' has been co-opted
| to mean something political rather than a theological
| category (as it was in the past). At the same time there
| are people who wouldn't have considered themselves
| religious in the past who are now identifying as
| 'Evangelical' more for political reasons. These latter
| folks may never attend a church but they like the political
| alignment.
|
| Historically, Evangelicalism was a reaction to
| Fundamentalism in the early part of the 20th century. I'm
| old enough to remember that there were Evangelicals who
| were politically liberal - my parents voted for McGovern in
| '72 and were very much anti-Nixon, antiwar, pro-environment
| and pro-civilrights, they considered themselves Evangelical
| in those times and they weren't alone - these are the folks
| that helped Jimmy Carter win in '76. Now Fundamentalism and
| rightwing politics have taken over Evangelicalism. Leading
| to the exodus away from Evangelicalism in many quarters
| (though many of them would still consider themselves
| 'Evangelical' in the earlier theological sense, they feel
| that the term has been co-opted so that it's not so much
| that they've moved it's that the wider Evangelical church
| has moved away from it's original moorings).
| pjmorris wrote:
| I can say that I know of communities (and am part of one) of
| Christians in the US who view the journey here and now as
| vital. If you're interested, consider the book 'We Make the
| Road by Walking', McLaren, or the BEMA Discipleship podcast,
| being sure to start with episode 0.
| theonething wrote:
| Why should the journey be orthogonal to the destination? The
| Bible confirms that both are vital.
|
| The Sermon on the Mount commands Christians to be kind, loving
| and good people in this life.
|
| Verses like Matthew 6:19-21, Colossians 3:2 and 1 Corinthians
| 2:9 compel Christians to live this life in light of eternity.
|
| To me, if you accept the presuppositions of the Christian
| worldview, this is logical. If this life and how you live in it
| is important, how much more so is eternity? After all, life is
| temporal. (Mark 8:36)
|
| > That's not the message of Christianity > The end means almost
| nothing to me.
|
| This betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of the Bible.
| Again, the Bible presupposes the existence of an eternal Heaven
| and an eternal Hell. This life is the seedtime for eternity.
|
| I'm not here to argue with non-Christians about the validity of
| these pre-suppositions. I'm saying for those who call
| themselves Christian and therefore hold the Bible to be true,
| the end (should) means everything to them.
| servercobra wrote:
| Growing up in the Lutheran church I found that unfortunately
| a lot of people didn't really read the Bible or think too
| hard about a lot of the passages. Most people listened to the
| sermons and how the pastor (or if you were in Lutheran day
| school like me, your teachers) interpreted and emphasized
| things. And while they did emphasize being a good person
| today, there was a huge emphasis on heaven and hell.
| theonething wrote:
| I think one of the results of what you describe is a subtle
| forsaking or compromise of fundamental Biblical truths in
| lieu of less controversial and more attractive principles
| that conform more closely with human sentiment and societal
| norms.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| > sad. In the US, I have never known a kind Christianity that
| espoused these ideas.
|
| And for contrast, I've never participated in an american church
| that has espoused anything _but_ , and haven't found that
| aspect of the faith to be particularly difficult in meeting.
|
| I know that the "pie in the sky" churches are out there, i just
| don't attend them.
| [deleted]
| mooneater wrote:
| > trying to work the concepts out in my own mind and to
| anticipate what the authors are going to say before turning each
| page. I usually fail to guess what the next page holds, but the
| fact that I've tried and failed makes me more ready to understand
| why the authors chose the paths that they did
|
| TIL Donald Knuth operates a bit like GPT-3 but for research paper
| narrative.
| ohwellhere wrote:
| I see it differently. It's not prediction based on anything
| statistical but based on one's understanding.
|
| I've made it a habit to ask myself what I expect the output to
| be for any programming operation, and why. It forces me to gain
| clarity into my mental model of what's happening, and it
| immediately highlights deficiencies in my model when it's
| proven wrong.
|
| I ask the same of others when I pair program with juniors or
| interviewees. I find super useful all around.
| mooneater wrote:
| > not prediction based on anything statistical but based on
| one's understanding
|
| It is still statistical. You still want to predict a
| distribution over expected next token.
|
| However, the function needed to estimate the likely next
| tokens are not simple max over enumerated next tokens like in
| a language model. It's more like a transition model in
| reinforcement learning.
| paulpauper wrote:
| This guys name shows up on almost every important combinatorics
| result . amazing how much he has done
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| that's got to be a typo: he is a venerable wizard, but
| combinatorics is a field far more vast than algorithmic things,
| often dominated historically by Hungarians
| bowsamic wrote:
| > One day, when I realized how hard it was to find any reason for
| my current unhappiness, I thought, "Wait a minute. I bet this
| unhappiness is really something chemical, not actually caused by
| circumstances.*" I began to speculate that my body was programmed
| to be unhappy a certain percentage of the time, and that hormones
| or something were the real reason behind moments of mild
| depression."
|
| This is exactly what happens to me with my dysthymia. The
| intensely heavy body feeling (medical term: "psychomotor
| retardation") and low energy aren't really problems in
| themselves, it's when I "buy into them" that it really goes
| downhill. The problem is that it does kinda suck and makes it
| hard to concentrate and do things.
|
| Unfortunately my mood has been generally very low since about age
| 9 to 11 unfortunately, and I'm 27 now. I don't see much value in
| life or in others or relationships (even though I am married!).
| So that combined with the physical symptoms makes it a difficult
| and slow life.
| wnolens wrote:
| How did you value another enough to enter into marriage with
| them? What was that decision like?
| bowsamic wrote:
| It just seemed like the obvious thing to do. We are more like
| very stable roommates that hug, rather than lovers.
| user_7832 wrote:
| (Disclaimer: Please take what I saw with a grain of salt - I'm
| just a stranger on the internet, not a doctor. No disrespect
| intended to you or anyone.)
|
| Have you checked if you might have other possible conditions? I
| too "thought" I was mildly depressed for several years (I'm in
| my early 20s now). Turned out to be (undiagnosed) ADHD that
| held me back from working "properly" (due to
| procrastination/planning issues) while making me ambitious,
| hence making me sad/disappointed/frustrated. (I hope to get a
| formal dx soon, apparently medication can help a very decent
| bit)
| [deleted]
| jmcphers wrote:
| > My mother is amazing to watch because she doesn't do anything
| efficiently, really: She puts about three times as much energy as
| necessary into everything she does. But she never spends any time
| wondering what to do next or how to optimize anything; she just
| keeps working. Her strategy, slightly simplified, is, "See
| something that needs to be done and do it." All day long. And at
| the end of the day, she's accomplished a huge amount.
|
| This strategy is remarkably powerful and I've used it to great
| effect in my career. Committing yourself to pushing forward every
| single day, even if just a little bit, and always just peeling
| off one single thing you can do next (even if it's tiny yet takes
| you all day) has a dizzying compounding effect.
| skadamat wrote:
| One of my favorite facts about Knuth is how rarely he checks
| email!
|
| https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2008/07/17/bonus-post-how-th...
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| My favorite Knuth fact is that he thinks P = NP. [1][2] That's
| a very contrarian view.
|
| [1]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=XDTOs8MgQfg
|
| [2]:
| https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2213858&WT....
| ipnon wrote:
| Fast responses to email was just cited as a key factor in
| founder success in Cowen's "Talent". He quoted Altman, who
| apparently ran some rudimentary data analysis based on his own
| emails while working at Y Combinator. Obviously Knuth is not
| successful _as a founder_.
| lnwlebjel wrote:
| > He quoted Altman, who apparently ran some rudimentary data
| analysis based on his own emails while working at Y
| Combinator.
|
| ... which would mean "Fast responses to email _from YC
| Partners_ was just cited as a key factor in founder success "
| ...
| Laakeri wrote:
| I don't know, he was a co-founder of computer science.
| zerop wrote:
| I admire Donald Knuth for his contribution on algorithms and CS
| stuff. He is one of greatest computer scientist of our time. But
| would his every advice outside CS fields will be great? I am not
| sure about this.
| ciphol wrote:
| Anyone who achieves on his level possesses not just raw innate
| brainpower but also other skills, for example organizational
| skills.
| hoten wrote:
| Don't you think well accomplished people are qualified to talk
| about problem solving and work habits? Seems those skills would
| be necessary for their achievements.
| orzig wrote:
| Moreover: "Is his advice outside CS great _for me_?"
|
| He's exceptional, in a very literal sense, so your prior would
| have be be 'no'
| pessimizer wrote:
| Do you require advice to be great before you listen to it? I
| tend to decide whether advice was great after I've heard it, or
| better still after I've put it into action.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| underdeserver wrote:
| (2020)
| nnoitra wrote:
| >That's quite different from a bachelor's degree or a master's
| degree; those degrees are awarded for a mastery of existing
| knowledge
|
| I didn't know a BsC was a sign of mastery of a field.
| svachalek wrote:
| How did you get from "mastery of knowledge" to "mastery of a
| field"?
| bigcat12345678 wrote:
| > Recently, I came across a few old and new interviews of Donald
| Knuth
|
| I have developed the conclusion that reading digestive summary
| from original source materials is ultimately ineffective for me
| at this stage of the life.
|
| Unfortunately, the author did not provide links to these
| interviews.
|
| For anyone who is writing a summary from other source material,
| please do provide references. That's one of the things I learned
| churning out low quality academic papers in PhD study.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Ironically, a significant portion of Knuth's lifetime work
| consists of digested summaries of original source materials.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| The complaint is not the summarization, it is the lack of
| citation. I see no irony in this light.
| maxerickson wrote:
| I wasn't referring to the complaint, it was a reference to
| the output of Knuth not being particularly accessible if
| you don't like reading digested summaries, because a big
| part of what he set out to do is to summarize academic
| research across a wide range of topics.
|
| I guess it's like rain on your weeding day.
| jwdunne wrote:
| One of the quotes seems to mention to that, where he says he
| digests a lot of papers to add a small part to TAoCP, since
| his aim is to write books that cover a the breadth of
| computer science (which necessarily cannot be as deep as
| these papers go).
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| Do you have quick summary of Knuth stating this? Just want to
| know, curious.
| copperx wrote:
| He has indeed said that, I can confirm that much. It should
| be easy to find in one in the interviews.
| drekipus wrote:
| Yes it should be easy to find in 50+ hours of video
| content.
| gkop wrote:
| He doesn't have to state this. Look at his work.
| gkop wrote:
| (In his digestive summaries, Knuth does provide citations, to
| be clear)
| maxerickson wrote:
| I guess I don't understand why someone would make the
| contrary assumption about famous academic work.
| gkop wrote:
| For sure, also I don't assume people know much about
| Knuth or expectations for academic work.
| belter wrote:
| Donald Knuth interviews are so interesting, but would like to
| particularly highlight this little piece of advice, out of this
| great playlist:
|
| "Donald Knuth - My advice to young people":
| https://youtu.be/75Ju0eM5T2c
|
| Complete Playlist - "Donald Knuth (Computer scientist)" [97
| videos]:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzeNLngr1Jq...
|
| Also the "Oral History of Donald Knuth" from the Computer
| History Museum is great.
|
| "Oral History of Donald Knuth Part 1":
| https://youtu.be/Wp7GAKLSGnI
|
| "Oral History of Donald Knuth Part 2":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqPPll3uDa0
|
| Plus..
|
| "Donald Knuth Interview 2006": https://github.com/kragen/knuth-
| interview-2006
|
| "An Interview with Donald Knuth":
| https://www.ntg.nl/maps/16/14.pdf
|
| "Interview with Donald Knuth":
| https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1193856
|
| This somewhat "colourful" page also tracks a few:
| http://www.softpanorama.org/People/Knuth/donald_knuth_interv...
|
| PS: The story that he told Steve Jobs he was "Full of shit" is
| not true.
|
| "Donald Knuth never told Steve Jobs that he was full of shit"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2634635
| copperx wrote:
| There's one interview where he talks about a special sofa
| that he uses to read (and write, I believe), but I haven't
| been able to find it with all my Google-fu.
| belter wrote:
| Well he says he has his special black chair...
|
| "Donald Knuth: Writing Process":
| https://youtu.be/vG0D-kKTF1g
| madisp wrote:
| probably the Lex Fridman podcast interviews:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BdBfsXbST8
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE1R8FYUJm0
|
| the second one is definitely where the last paragraph in the
| article is from. Weird that the interview is dated 2021-09-09
| and the post is 2020-04-30?
| mjreacher wrote:
| He also did an interview for the Web of Stories project which
| is available on YouTube and has his thoughts on his life and
| various other curious topics.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzeNLngr1Jq.
| ..
| jjice wrote:
| Wow, Lex has gotten some of the greats on his podcast. I
| should probably give it a go. The few episodes I've seen were
| more shallow than I was looking for as an engineer, but I
| assumed that was because he's helping bring these interviews
| and ideas to a wider audience.
| bitexploder wrote:
| Lex and Joscha Bach episodes were fascinating to me as
| well.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| if you're looking for more technical ones the two
| interviews he did with Crhis Lattner on compilers are
| great. Francois Chollet and Schmidhuber and other ML
| related interviews were good also.
|
| But he does seem to be doing less and less of the
| scientific interviews which is a little bit of a shame
| given the unique access he seems to have.
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