3 ms·
It's kinda important to note here that the "M50" designation indicates that the excercise is an "unsolved research problem". It's not an in-joke; Knuth is pres
by kjs3 11y ago
It's kinda important to note here that the "M50" designation indicates that the excercise is an "unsolved research problem". It's not an in-joke; Knuth is presenting unsolved problems with the intention that the student would consider trying solving them.
- pajop 11y agobtw, if you didn't find an in-joke [1] funny [2][3][4][5] then it's probably because of a very good reason :) Knuth himself found it funny [6] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-joke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-joke [2] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.folklore.computers/qfwJTPPFdsw https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.folklore.compute... [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/38gt65/wasnt_expecting_my_biggest_laugh_of_the_day_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/38gt65/was... [4] http://texthook.com/blog/2013/07/01/reading-knuth/ http://texthook.com/blog/2013/07/01/reading-knuth/ [5] http://tal.forum2.org/story_45 http://tal.forum2.org/story_45 [6] http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb17-1/tb50knut.pdf http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb17-1/tb50knut.pdf (page 10)
- kjs3 11y agoYou're of course right; I should have considered my response more. I suppose it would be more accurate to say the M50 problems are not only an in-joke in the sense that one always hopes for a George Dantzig moment. But clearly the inclusion of something like FLT has to be done with a at least a little chuckle from the author.