
Donald Knuth: Algorithms, Complexity, Life, and the Art of Programming [video] - tambourine_man
https://youtube.com/watch?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4&v=2BdBfsXbST8
======
rsiqueira
This is the conversation between Lex Fridman (MIT) and Donald Knuth, the
legendary computer scientist & mathematician. Lex Fridman's podcast is my
favorite and it's about Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). He says: "To me
AI is bigger than computing, it is our civilization's journey into
understanding the human mind and creating echoes of it in the machine.".

~~~
andreygrehov
I don't know Lex Fridman, but with all respect, I don't like him as an
interviewer at all. He has zero interviewing experience, IMHO. It looks so
amateur. Regardless, kudos to him for bringing in so many amazing people. His
playlist is sick!

~~~
K0SM0S
I think your post is valuable opinion and feeding discussion so have an upvote
to balance the downvoters. _(why did they..? oh well :shrug:)_

I actually disagree with you on interview style, I like his (it grows on you,
or so I found); his playlist is indeed sick. And it keeps getting better, I
suspect he'll eventually get 80% of the who's-who in AI or around it. Probably
the most promising high-level podcast about it.

Other podcasts are more in the weeds, actual work on ML/DL etc, production
cases and frameworks (see _The Changelog_ 's master feed for instance,
"Practical AI" with actual SWE's). Lex's is interesting insofar as he's an AI
researcher at MIT, the highest technical acumen you can reach in the field, so
you can trust him to orient/frame the conversation (actually, _learn_ from his
follow-up questions and remarks). And it's sometimes funny (when you have some
background too) to see/hear his responses to non-technical interviewees.

He's a great mind (and has a great heart), no question about it; thus whatever
quirks you may find diverging from classic interview style are worth ignoring.
Focus on the meat, when it gets good, it gets _really_ good.

~~~
andreygrehov
Thank you. I posted a comment this morning and had a chance to look through
Fridman's YouTube channel before replying to other commenters.

I didn't know that these interviews are podcast-first, which is probably why
the interviewer is so laid back and slow talking, as pointed out by @unoti. I
looked up Fridman's lectures, they are indeed a little bit more energetic, but
he is generally a calm individual, so in combination with slow talking and
monotone voice that he intentionally uses in podcasts, it makes his questions
quite boring to listen, which is what was immediately reflected in my original
comment.

> thus whatever quirks you may find diverging from classic interview style are
> worth ignoring. Focus on the meat, when it gets good, it gets really good.

Lex Fridman is smart. No doubt. If one listens carefully, he indeed asks good
questions, which is something I originally missed. He interviews great people
and the meat is obviously there. But I still strongly believe that there is a
huge room for improvement for Lex as an interviewer and content creator. Has
he interviewed unknown people, nobody would listen to him, IMHO.

~~~
K0SM0S
Ah, I see. I think, in all fairness to him, you express a desire for some
'journalistic' or 'interviewer' skills. I totally understand that, the greats
in those fields are awesome.

However I think it's a tall order to ask people in general to excel in two
entirely distinct domains, especially at such a 'young' age (MIT must've taken
most of his time so far). So with domain-driven people who dabble in media, we
get their strong vertical at the cost of more mediocre delivery — but to me
that remains sweeter than a "professional" journalist who speaks second-hand
about everything, at least for most technical or complex topics.

He's got time to get a lot better at interviewing, podcasting, if that's the
goal. Eventually, he can be both a great AI researcher _and_ a great
podcaster. Meanwhile, I'll take it regardless because that's the best we've
got now.

> Has he interviewed unknown people, nobody would listen to him, IMHO.

If the topic were totally irrelevant, maybe; but I have a fondness for
scientists trying to speak to everyone, e.g. on YouTube / podcast / whatever,
so I would still listen probably. Like that guy, Robert Miles from Cambridge
who speaks of AI safety[1] — delivery wasn't great in the beginning, but damn
were the topics incredible food for thought.

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLB7AzTwc6VFZrBsO2ucBMg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLB7AzTwc6VFZrBsO2ucBMg)

------
janvdberg
Speaking about Knuth audiofiles/podcasts, I recently created a RSS feed for
the Knuth's "Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About" audio files
([https://j11g.com/knuth.xml](https://j11g.com/knuth.xml)).

This way you can listen to it in your favorite podcast player.

For example, I added the feed to Overcast:
[https://overcast.fm/p1120847-YM0aS7](https://overcast.fm/p1120847-YM0aS7)

~~~
OldGuyInTheClub
The Web of Stories interview from the late 1990s is also good:

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzeNLngr1Jq...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzeNLngr1JqyQki3wdoGrCn)

------
haecceity
Knuth thinks machine learners are not geeks. What do you guys think.

Also he defines geek as people having certain qualities like understanding
systems at different levels of abstraction.

~~~
threatofrain
IMO he's saying ML people are fundamentally scientists, and scientists care
more about the data than the techniques; an applied machine learning expert is
in some ways a domain empiricist. A geek perhaps is somebody who enjoys
tinkering with systems and methods in and of itself.

Naturally there is some intersection, but these are all soft terms anyway. IMO
geeks have lost overall everywhere, replaced by mainstream commercial
interests because the tech world needed to grow very fast.

~~~
K0SM0S
I agree with you. Just about the best 'proofs' I get in social-chaotic topics
like this is by going to the extremes:

\- a "total" or "100%" data scientist researching ML might spend the better
part of his days in an office, without a computer, just thinking on a
whiteboard and paper. He then hands specs for tech people to translate,
implement, run (code, systems, workflow).

\- "geek" means passionate (early 20th century word to describe "bookworms"),
thus it may apply to anything — nowadays it's applied implicitly, without
specifying further, to technology, "geek" means "tech geek". In that sense,
whatever they do, geeks are never far from machines, gadgets, supercomputers
(!?), some ethernet patch...

Both actually have nothing to do with each other, and do not seem mutually
exclusive to me; but in the extreme range of the spectrum, they clearly are
totally different people with unrelated concerns and, most likely, jobs.

But that's all fluff and you have to thank idling geeks for writing such
blabla. _(though I hear HR loves that kind of reports, profiling makes the
world so easy, right? Hey, what do you know, someone somewhere might copy
/paste these threads for a living as we speak)._

------
OldGuyInTheClub
Loving the video. I have a couple of volumes of TAOCP. Even though I am not in
CS, the series is so well known and so respected that it is a must-have. I'll
periodically leaf through some pages and have a hard time grasping how much
work he must have put in, how many papers he must have read - good, bad, and
indifferent - to extract the best and put them all in context. No wonder he
gave up email before most people even heard of it and decades before it became
cool. I saw him many times on the Stanford campus in the late 1980s when I was
a grad student in chemistry. Never went up to say hello and to thank him for
TeX.

~~~
haecceity
I think he has a secretary that does emails for him. Also he responded to my
email a few years ago.

~~~
OldGuyInTheClub
That's quite an accomplishment. I hear that people who get a reward check from
him for errata or other help usually frame them instead of cashing them.

According to this, he has a secretary that filters messages for him:
[https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html](https://www-cs-
faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html)

~~~
haecceity
Don't be too impressed, I didn't get a cheque. He's just a really nice guy.

~~~
nirvdrum
FYI, he stopped sending checks back in 2008 due to check fraud:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_reward_check](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_reward_check).
It's a shame. I had a professor that had received one for finding a bug
somewhere and he proudly displayed it in his office. It was a pretty good
conversation starter.

~~~
milemi
He still sends paper checks, issued by a fictitious Bank of San Serriffe, so
you still have something to frame, in addition to being listed at
[https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/boss.html](https://www-cs-
faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/boss.html)

~~~
nirvdrum
Ahh, thanks for clarifying. I knew about the fictitious bank, but didn't
realize you got a paper check for it.

~~~
OldGuyInTheClub
Lockheed's legendary Kelly Johnson was said to have given quarters to anyone
at the Skunkworks who won a technical bet off of him. I believe these were
also treasured by those who got them.

------
killjoywashere
He mentions (and shows) a favorite paper tablet he uses with very finely ruled
lines. He found it in Canada about 40 years ago while visiting his sister.
Anybody know who makes his tablets? discussion here:
[https://youtu.be/2BdBfsXbST8?t=2587](https://youtu.be/2BdBfsXbST8?t=2587)

------
techbio
For those curious about the game of Hex mentioned at(59:35)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9n...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4&v=2BdBfsXbST8&t=59m35s)

There is a John Nash connection:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex_(board_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex_\(board_game\))

------
mindcrime
You gotta love Donald Knuth. What a guy. And what a project TAOCP has turned
into. I just hope like crazy that he actually finishes it. I hate to even
entertain the possibility but Robert Jordan's name comes to mind right now.
Sadly, Knuth is not a young man, and there appears to be a lot of material
left to write.

~~~
commandlinefan
Not only is there a lot of material left to write, Knuth is the greatest Yak
Shaver in history: when he realized that the typography available for his next
volume was substandard, he put off writing it for 30 years to revolutionize
typography (not that I'm complaining!) Then when he picked it up, he realized
his bespoke assembler language was out of date so he invented a new one first.
He did finally get around to publishing part of another volume, though.

~~~
svat
Actually this is only partly true.

Here's a compressed timeline of books and other works of Knuth:

1962: Starts writing TAOCP. 1968, 1969, 1973: Volume 1, 1st edition. 1969:
Volume 2, 1st edition. 1973: Volume 3, 1st edition. 1974: Turing Award. 1974:
Volume 1, 2nd edition. 1974: Surreal Numbers (written in 6 days “and on the
7th day he rested”). 1976: Mariages Stables et leurs relations avec d'autres
problèmes combinatoires.

1977 February: Receives galley of Volume 2 2nd edition (publishers have
switched from hot-metal typesetting (Monotype) to phototypesetting, is
dissatisfied with typography and excited by the possibility of getting it
right with digital typesetting). Plans to have galleys ready in the summer :-)
1978 January: Gives Gibbs lecture (“Mathematical Typography”) on his ongoing
research, unexpectedly many people are excited and want to use TeX. 1978:
Finishes first version of TeX (aka TeX78, in SAIL) 1980: Starts work on
rewrite of TeX (so that it can be used outside SAIL). 1981: Mathematics for
the Analysis of Algorithms. 1981: Volume 2, 2nd edition. Realizes fonts still
look bad on paper, starts getting more font design feedback from the masters.
1982: Finishes TeX, starts rewrite of METAFONT. 1984: Finishes METAFONT.

1986: Volumes ABCDE of Computers and Typesetting 1990: Announces end of his
work on TeX and METAFONT (will only fix major bugs; others can continue
writing other programs)

1992, 1996, 1999, 2000, 2003, 2003, 2010, 2011, 2011: Eight (plus one) volumes
of collected papers.

1989: Mathematical Writing (lecture notes) 1990: 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated
(stratified random sampling of the Bible, with illustrations by many
designers). 1992: Axioms and Hulls. 1993: CWEB. 1993: The Stanford GraphBase
(some toy programs in CWEB). 1994: Concrete Mathematics.

1997: Volume 1, 3rd edition 1997: Volume 2, 3rd edition 1998: Volume 3, 3rd
edition 1999: MMIXware

2001: Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About (based on 1999 lectures
at MIT on religion)

2005: Volume 4 Fasc 2 (part of Volume 4A later) 2005: Volume 4 Fasc 3 (part of
Volume 4A later) 2006: Volume 4 Fasc 4 (part of Volume 4A later) 2008: Volume
4 Fasc 0 (part of Volume 4A later) 2009: Volume 4 Fasc 1 (part of Volume 4A
later) 2011: Volume 4A.

2015: Volume 4, Fasc 6 (middle third of Volume 4B) 2018: Fantasia Apocalyptica
Illustrated 2019/2020: Volume 4, Fasc 5 (first third of Volume 4B)

Planned: ????: Volume 4, Fasc 7 and 8 (last third of Volume 4B) 2025 (yeah
right): Volume 5

So although he definitely badly underestimated how much time the typography
project would take (he thought it would be done in a summer! then again, he
also thought in 1962 that he'd be done with TAOCP in a year or two), and
although it's technically correct that 38 years passed between 1973 (1st
edition of Volume 3) and 2011 (Volume 4A), he wasn't spending all of it on
typography; much of it was spent on other projects and on producing new
editions (which in his case are a lot of work!) of earlier TAOCP volumes and
other books. And even during the period 1977-1989 when he was working
primarily on typography, he somehow managed to publish about 50 papers (P77 to
P125), 60 other papers (Q48 to Q110), and 20 reports (R35 to R55):
[https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/vita.pdf](https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/vita.pdf)
(I really wish someone would parse his vita.tex from
[https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/vita.html](https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/vita.html),
make it machine-readable and put it on a nice webpage sortable by year and
topic and listing newer editions etc).

------
carapace
"Kuh-nooth"? The K isn't silent? Have I been saying it wrong all these years?

~~~
fmela
Yes, yes, and yes. It's in his FAQ: [https://www-cs-
faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/faq.html](https://www-cs-
faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/faq.html)

~~~
carapace
's what I get for being a recluse. I really have to get out more often.

------
superpermutat0r
Anyone knows which are the four Japanese people he mentiones expanding on his
idea, then him finding out about it, generalizing it even more, writing code
and playing around with it and then writing the final report? He was being
really non-specific about the problem.

I'm interested in his writings now when he is no longer actively publishing
research.

For example, that latest proof golf
[https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4229#comment-1815290](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4229#comment-1815290)
was such a joy to read.

~~~
svat
He _is_ still actively publishing! TAOCP Vol 4 Fascicle 5 (which is going to
be the first one-third of Volume 4B) came out less than a month ago, and it
contains a lot of material and ideas that have never been published anywhere
before. To answer your specific question, I'm positive he's referring to
Dancing Links: see section 7.2.2.1 in the published fascicle, or his draft
(pre-fascicle 5c) at
[https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/fasc5c.ps.gz](https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/fasc5c.ps.gz)
\-- the idea originally came from Hirosi Hitotumatu and Kohei Noshita (1979),
then Knuth popularized it under the name "Dancing Links" (2000?), then the
idea of "Dancing with ZDDs" was by Masaaki Nishino, Norihito Yasuda, Shin-ichi
Minato, Masaaki Nagata (2017), and he's extended it to Algorithm Z in this
publication.

~~~
superpermutat0r
Thank you very much.

I've already read more than 50 pages and I love it. It's just incredible how
much problems can be now solved by a faster algorithm.

I had an idea of solving lotto design problems, this might be a way to do it
quickly.

------
enriquto
Is there a text transcript of this interview?

~~~
lowdose
You could try to download the auto generated subtitles with youtube-dl.

~~~
enriquto
Sure, but I'm just surprised that such a high-level interview is not available
in a curated textual form, sanctioned by the interviewer.

~~~
bkemmer
You can give money via patreon to support this effort.

~~~
K0SM0S
Or better yet, do it oneself: about 70 episodes, 7 billion people and change,
it only takes 1 out of 100 million of us to transcribe 1 episode each to clear
the work.

 _Hint: on a desktop browser, beneath the video you may click the "..." menu,
select "Open transcript" and voila, you may copy/paste the whole (though UX is
awful, I have yet to find a "copy all" button)._

Here's a pastebin with minimal formatting for your perusal:
[https://pastebin.com/RQYhREEc](https://pastebin.com/RQYhREEc)

~~~
enriquto
In the olden days, it was a journalist's job to transcribe their interviews,
instead of publishing the raw unedited tapes of the recorded stuff.

~~~
wsy
It was usually a typist's job, and you paid for the newspaper, instead of
watching the interview for free on Youtube.

------
jcrubino
Did Dr. Knuth stopped giving the Christmas Tree lecture this last year?

Is the Fridman interview the replacement?

~~~
madmax108
No, no. The Christmas lecture happened this year as well (the 25th year in
fact!):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DKo219ZHMw&feature=emb_titl...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DKo219ZHMw&feature=emb_title)

As is usual from Prof. Knuth, it's great with tonnes of nuggets of wisdom,
especially if you are a fan of easter eggs (though his "style" of presentation
bothers quite a few of my friends)! :)

------
nabla9
His answer to the last question is great. ;)

------
simplegeek
I am curious, what is his chair he talks about?

~~~
QuotedForTruth
All he says is "I found this chair that was designed by a Swedish guy". Its
black and looks like leather with a high cushioned back. That isn't a lot to
go on. I searched and it doesn't seem to be something he has talked about
before either.

I was interested too, but to be honest, its probably pretty unlikely that the
perfect chair for Knuth is the perfect chair for me or you too.

