[HN Gopher] 30 years of Donald Knuth's 'Christmas Lectures' are ... ___________________________________________________________________ 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-... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-12-26 23:00 UTC)