7 ms·

Donald Knuth – The Joy of Asymptotics (2000) [video]

139 points by espeed 8y ago

jelliclesfarm 8y ago
Happy 81th to Prof.Knuth.
svat 8y ago
Yesterday was Knuth's 81st birthday, and perhaps for that reason, a good number of videos have been made unlisted on the stanfordonline YouTube channel. Recording the links here for posterity: • "Donald Knuth lectures" https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL94E35692EB9D36F3 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL94E35692EB9D36F3 (111 videos) This includes several sub-series but the playlists don't have the videos in the right order: • “Aha sessions”: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rNbeodV7vqxxxWpe4s_SFty https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rNbeodV7vqx... (Knuth used to run a “problem-solving seminar” at Stanford; these are videos from one such year.) Three lecture series on TeX that are now of historical interest (e.g. the TeX program has changed considerably): • “TeX for Beginners” https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rN1PKcXvzjor-Bl6o6eSNTN https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rN1PKcXvzjo... • “Advanced TeXarcana” https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rNrDaAftaqMRQEmsARSpLHi https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rNrDaAftaqM... • “The Internal Details of TeX82” https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rM2JuHk3qBhQDxY9QGrLrYE https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rM2JuHk3qBh... (I've found this invaluable as I try to read the TeX program) The following two playlists are still unlisted and I no longer know how to get to them: • Mathematical Writing https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rOrFl78-o6m_QbJqTXGfVVb https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rOrFl78-o6m... • Computer Musings - Donald Knuth https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rNMsVRnSJ44WuwbminUqXX2 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rNMsVRnSJ44... (I happened to have them in my browser history… these playlists used to be linked from http://scpd.stanford.edu/knuth/ http://scpd.stanford.edu/knuth/ but as of yesterday they seem to have changed it up, and also made the videos public (why were they “unlisted” earlier? No idea).) And completely unrelated, but if you happen to be interested in church organ music and the Bible's Book of Revelation, the world premiere of Knuth's Fantasia Apocalyptica (https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/fant.html https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/fant.html): • https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvixIGKr5sJffdfwecygYqhXsgz-EBCC8 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvixIGKr5sJffdfwecygY...
- x220 8y ago
  Why were they unlisted?
  - svat 8y ago
    In my first sentence I wrote "have been made unlisted" but meant the opposite: "have been made public". As for why they used to be unlisted earlier, I have no idea. Just found them following links from Knuth's website.
- espeed 8y ago
  Here's part 1 of Prof Knuth's 2007 interview by the ACM in honor of his 1974 Turing Award (it's the interview that ended up going on for more than 7 hours over 2 days). It's in a conversational style on life topics that are familiar and relatable to most. Don Knuth, 1974 ACM Turing Award Recipient - Part 1 [video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUJ01nRE7r0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUJ01nRE7r0 Transcript: https://amturing.acm.org/pdf/KnuthTuringTranscript.pdf https://amturing.acm.org/pdf/KnuthTuringTranscript.pdf
thomasahle 8y ago
The resolution of this makes it virtually impossible to read any of what he is writing. Is there a higher resolution version available?
- espeed 8y ago
  These videos were just released yesterday from the Stanford archives in honor of Prof Knuth's 81st birthday so there may not be higher resolution versions available. Maybe this is a subtle call to some aspiring hacker to re-res them with a super-resolution deep learning algorithm. What a cool gift to the world that would be.
- hackermailman 8y ago
  The orig IIRC was a windows media player format file you could try searching for it, though most of what he's covering is in this collection of papers https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/aa.html https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/aa.html I think he gave this talk twice, once in 2000 and once at HERCMA 2001
lfmunoz4 8y ago
Anyone know why he never went to see a speech therapist?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 8y ago
  "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- svat 8y ago
  > unfortunately he's unable to present it well. His lectures are almost useless. I don't know; I've listened to dozens of hours of his videos and found them all useful and rather clear. I've heard comments like yours from others though, and I guess there are two points: * Of course a person at 80 will not speak the same way they did at 40. (I'm currently watching his lectures on Mathematical Writing, given when he was 49: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mert0kmZvVM&index=2&t=0s&list=PLoROMvodv4rOrFl78-o6m_QbJqTXGfVVb https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mert0kmZvVM&index=2&t=0s&lis... -- youtube has some even older videos on TeX etc but they're probably of less general interest.) Older people generally have more halting speech and the like, but this is perfectly natural. I suspect that if, for cultural or whatever reasons, you haven't spent a lot of time listening to old people and learning from them, you may just find it unfamiliar. Nevertheless, I was in the audience when Knuth gave his 2017 Christmas Lecture weeks before his 80th birthday, and a lot of the audience did seem to follow along and enjoyed it. (You can hear laughter in the expected places in the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxQw4CdxLr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxQw4CdxLr8 -- so clearly not everyone feels the way you do.) * Every person has their own speech style, their way of translating thought into sounds. Like an unfamiliar accent, it may take a few minutes or hours to get used to it. (If you care enough about the content you will.) What you get from speech idiosyncrasies (their pauses, backtracking, mistakes, etc.) that you don't get from the written word is a window into someone's way of thinking, and I find in Knuth's lectures it's much easier to follow along his thought process, than in speakers you may consider more "smooth". It's very natural and informal, even when he's discussing highly technical topics there's a lot of him that comes through, and that's very valuable IMO. (And his speech seems well within the norm... I've seen comments like yours that sometimes attempt to diagnose medical conditions from afar; that can seem a bit excessive.)
sytelus 8y ago
One of the coolest part in this video is how Knuth insist on computing all fundamental constants to 40 digits and how it saved him 3 times!

139 points by espeed 8y ago

Happy 81th to Prof.Knuth.

svat 8y ago

Yesterday was Knuth's 81st birthday, and perhaps for that reason, a good number of videos have been made unlisted on the stanfordonline YouTube channel. Recording the links here for posterity: • "Donald Knuth lectures" https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL94E35692EB9D36F3 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL94E35692EB9D36F3 (111 videos) This includes several sub-series but the playlists don't have the videos in the right order: • “Aha sessions”: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rNbeodV7vqxxxWpe4s_SFty https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rNbeodV7vqx... (Knuth used to run a “problem-solving seminar” at Stanford; these are videos from one such year.) Three lecture series on TeX that are now of historical interest (e.g. the TeX program has changed considerably): • “TeX for Beginners” https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rN1PKcXvzjor-Bl6o6eSNTN https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rN1PKcXvzjo... • “Advanced TeXarcana” https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rNrDaAftaqMRQEmsARSpLHi https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rNrDaAftaqM... • “The Internal Details of TeX82” https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rM2JuHk3qBhQDxY9QGrLrYE https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rM2JuHk3qBh... (I've found this invaluable as I try to read the TeX program) The following two playlists are still unlisted and I no longer know how to get to them: • Mathematical Writing https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rOrFl78-o6m_QbJqTXGfVVb https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rOrFl78-o6m... • Computer Musings - Donald Knuth https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rNMsVRnSJ44WuwbminUqXX2 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rNMsVRnSJ44... (I happened to have them in my browser history… these playlists used to be linked from http://scpd.stanford.edu/knuth/ http://scpd.stanford.edu/knuth/ but as of yesterday they seem to have changed it up, and also made the videos public (why were they “unlisted” earlier? No idea).) And completely unrelated, but if you happen to be interested in church organ music and the Bible's Book of Revelation, the world premiere of Knuth's Fantasia Apocalyptica (https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/fant.html https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/fant.html): • https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvixIGKr5sJffdfwecygYqhXsgz-EBCC8 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvixIGKr5sJffdfwecygY...

x220 8y ago
Why were they unlisted?
- svat 8y ago
  In my first sentence I wrote "have been made unlisted" but meant the opposite: "have been made public". As for why they used to be unlisted earlier, I have no idea. Just found them following links from Knuth's website.
espeed 8y ago
Here's part 1 of Prof Knuth's 2007 interview by the ACM in honor of his 1974 Turing Award (it's the interview that ended up going on for more than 7 hours over 2 days). It's in a conversational style on life topics that are familiar and relatable to most. Don Knuth, 1974 ACM Turing Award Recipient - Part 1 [video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUJ01nRE7r0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUJ01nRE7r0 Transcript: https://amturing.acm.org/pdf/KnuthTuringTranscript.pdf https://amturing.acm.org/pdf/KnuthTuringTranscript.pdf

thomasahle 8y ago

The resolution of this makes it virtually impossible to read any of what he is writing. Is there a higher resolution version available?

espeed 8y ago
These videos were just released yesterday from the Stanford archives in honor of Prof Knuth's 81st birthday so there may not be higher resolution versions available. Maybe this is a subtle call to some aspiring hacker to re-res them with a super-resolution deep learning algorithm. What a cool gift to the world that would be.
hackermailman 8y ago
The orig IIRC was a windows media player format file you could try searching for it, though most of what he's covering is in this collection of papers https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/aa.html https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/aa.html I think he gave this talk twice, once in 2000 and once at HERCMA 2001

lfmunoz4 8y ago

Anyone know why he never went to see a speech therapist?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dang 8y ago
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
svat 8y ago
> unfortunately he's unable to present it well. His lectures are almost useless. I don't know; I've listened to dozens of hours of his videos and found them all useful and rather clear. I've heard comments like yours from others though, and I guess there are two points: * Of course a person at 80 will not speak the same way they did at 40. (I'm currently watching his lectures on Mathematical Writing, given when he was 49: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mert0kmZvVM&index=2&t=0s&list=PLoROMvodv4rOrFl78-o6m_QbJqTXGfVVb https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mert0kmZvVM&index=2&t=0s&lis... -- youtube has some even older videos on TeX etc but they're probably of less general interest.) Older people generally have more halting speech and the like, but this is perfectly natural. I suspect that if, for cultural or whatever reasons, you haven't spent a lot of time listening to old people and learning from them, you may just find it unfamiliar. Nevertheless, I was in the audience when Knuth gave his 2017 Christmas Lecture weeks before his 80th birthday, and a lot of the audience did seem to follow along and enjoyed it. (You can hear laughter in the expected places in the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxQw4CdxLr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxQw4CdxLr8 -- so clearly not everyone feels the way you do.) * Every person has their own speech style, their way of translating thought into sounds. Like an unfamiliar accent, it may take a few minutes or hours to get used to it. (If you care enough about the content you will.) What you get from speech idiosyncrasies (their pauses, backtracking, mistakes, etc.) that you don't get from the written word is a window into someone's way of thinking, and I find in Knuth's lectures it's much easier to follow along his thought process, than in speakers you may consider more "smooth". It's very natural and informal, even when he's discussing highly technical topics there's a lot of him that comes through, and that's very valuable IMO. (And his speech seems well within the norm... I've seen comments like yours that sometimes attempt to diagnose medical conditions from afar; that can seem a bit excessive.)

sytelus 8y ago

One of the coolest part in this video is how Knuth insist on computing all fundamental constants to 40 digits and how it saved him 3 times!