[HN Gopher] 30 years of Donald Knuth's 'Christmas Lectures' are ...
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30 years of Donald Knuth's 'Christmas Lectures' are online -
including 2023's
Author : MilnerRoute
Score : 53 points
Date : 2023-12-26 20:46 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (science.slashdot.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (science.slashdot.org)
| svat wrote:
| While I love these videos, they have been online for several
| years now. The Slashdot headline is a misunderstanding of the
| article it is based on[1] which, when it says "Recently Stanford
| uploaded...", means a few years ago (before which too they were
| online, but not grouped into the same set of playlists on
| YouTube).
|
| Anyway, the article this is based on[1] is a good summary of this
| year's talk. For several years now, this website
| (thenewstack.io), and specifically David Cassel, have been
| writing excellent summaries of each year's talk (see the
| "Previous Donald Knuth Christmas Lectures" at the end of the
| post, which links to everything from 2017 and later).
|
| [1]: https://thenewstack.io/donald-knuths-2023-christmas-
| lecture-...
| npinsker wrote:
| Reading a few of the written summaries, I'm finding them
| lacking. They often elide or even misstate important details
| and definitions; and the things the author focuses on are
| sometimes odd and make me think they aren't able to understand
| the mathematics.
| svat wrote:
| Whatever small faults there may be, each year these are the
| _only_ reporting of these lectures at this level of detail.
| And the attention to humorous anecdotes or Knuthisms is not a
| problem; these are what those of us who attended the talk
| also remember. (The actual mathematics is often just a
| paragraph or two, or one problem and solution, in TAOCP and
| can be read there -- which is another indication of how
| "packed" the books are.)
| trollied wrote:
| Oh wow, Slashdot. Shame it faded away. The site was my go-to for
| tech news in the late 90s.
|
| Hot grits/Natalie Portman etc.
| abhgh wrote:
| Like another comment says this is is not recent - these have been
| up on YouTube for a while. If you're in the bay area, these are
| free to attend (and recommended if you're a Knuth fan ofc), but
| reach early because the seats get filled up. Also at the end of
| the lecture Knuth gives away free copies of some of his books.
| These are usually in a pile, and are given first-come-first-
| serve; which is a polite way of saying there can be a mad rush
| for them :-)
|
| I have been lucky to attend 3 of these in person (technically 4,
| but I had to leave one early), and more than the lectures
| themselves, Knuth's attention to detail and enthusiasm have been
| inspirational. He's 85 now - I would consider myself lucky if I
| have a third of his mental acuity at that age!
|
| TAOCP Vol 4B is the most recent book in the TAOCP series which
| covers SAT solvers - apparently Knuth's deep dive in the area is
| recent, in due course of which he implemented a few SAT solvers
| (5, if i remember right). Talk about dedication. Since I have
| dabbled in using SAT solvers a bit, this is the volume I got
| autographed by him at the 2023 talk.
|
| An interesting thing that came up was someone mentioned to him
| that a lot of results in 4B were empirical (including those
| around the topic he covered this time: dancing cells). His
| response was that theoretical analyses is still to catch up in
| these areas, so empirical comparison is the best you can do. I
| thought that was an interesting parallel to how ML has evolved.
| from-nibly wrote:
| Man that comments section is something else.
| orsenthil wrote:
| In 2015, Knuth lectured on Comma Free Codes. I wrote a post about
| this with examples -
| https://senthil.learntosolveit.com/posts/comma-free-codes.ht...
| dbrueck wrote:
| Linkception, sheesh.
|
| Here's the story with /one/ layer of links removed:
| https://thenewstack.io/donald-knuths-2023-christmas-lecture-...
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(page generated 2023-12-26 23:00 UTC)