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Yes. It's difficult to listen to live. I'm (we're?) not knocking Knuth - he's brilliant; he's just hard to follow. Once he gets going, he gets tripped up with a

Yes. It's difficult to listen to live. I'm (we're?) not knocking Knuth - he's brilliant; he's just hard to follow. Once he gets going, he gets tripped up with all that's going on in his head and the "uh uh um" throws off the flow.

c3534l 9y ago
I think that's just how old people talk sometimes.
- nocman 9y ago
  It's got nothing to do with his age, as far as I can tell Don Knuth has always spoken this way (though I suspect it may have gotten more pronounced [ no pun intended ] as he has gotten older). I agree with what others have said. I think he just has 50 things going through his mind at any one moment, and the part of his brain that is controlling his speech just isn't always sure which of those 50 things it should be sharing at that moment. I think any of us would be fortunate to be half as brilliant as he is. And the best part is, it is so obvious that he is one of the most humble and likeable people on the planet. Always generous, patient, and never arrogant. I personally would travel a great distance just to have lunch with the man, if ever given the opportunity. A prime example in this video is the person who keeps interrupting him to tell him he had missed a line in his diagram. To be honest, my first reaction (after the guy had repeated it for like the 4th time or something) I was a little perturbed, and wished the guy would just shut up and let Don continue. But what was Don's reaction? After he finally understood what the guy was saying, he saw the error, corrected his mistake, and thanked the guy for "saving him 20 minutes". Thank you Don Knuth! Not only are you brilliant, humble, hard-working and kind, you are a gentleman's gentleman, and the the world needs more men like you!
username223 9y ago
Knuth's brilliance and eccentricity (or autism?) are a package deal. He's a guy who wanted to write mathematics papers, got side-tracked into creating a type-setting program (TeX), then got side-side-tracked into creating a font language (Metafont).

c3534l 9y ago

I think that's just how old people talk sometimes.

nocman 9y ago
It's got nothing to do with his age, as far as I can tell Don Knuth has always spoken this way (though I suspect it may have gotten more pronounced [ no pun intended ] as he has gotten older). I agree with what others have said. I think he just has 50 things going through his mind at any one moment, and the part of his brain that is controlling his speech just isn't always sure which of those 50 things it should be sharing at that moment. I think any of us would be fortunate to be half as brilliant as he is. And the best part is, it is so obvious that he is one of the most humble and likeable people on the planet. Always generous, patient, and never arrogant. I personally would travel a great distance just to have lunch with the man, if ever given the opportunity. A prime example in this video is the person who keeps interrupting him to tell him he had missed a line in his diagram. To be honest, my first reaction (after the guy had repeated it for like the 4th time or something) I was a little perturbed, and wished the guy would just shut up and let Don continue. But what was Don's reaction? After he finally understood what the guy was saying, he saw the error, corrected his mistake, and thanked the guy for "saving him 20 minutes". Thank you Don Knuth! Not only are you brilliant, humble, hard-working and kind, you are a gentleman's gentleman, and the the world needs more men like you!

username223 9y ago

Knuth's brilliance and eccentricity (or autism?) are a package deal. He's a guy who wanted to write mathematics papers, got side-tracked into creating a type-setting program (TeX), then got side-side-tracked into creating a font language (Metafont).