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There are many more important things about Knuth and his work, but one of my favorite stories about him is that he showed up at Randall Munroe's Google tech talk [0], and, during Q&A, asked Munroe "Have you thought about animated cartoons?" and "What is your n log n algorithm for searching?"

I have a special respect for people who are both brilliant and humble, and Knuth is my poster person for that.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJOS0sV2a24

⬐ vsundar

21 mts in: https://youtu.be/zJOS0sV2a24?t=1288

⬐ 7fYZ7mJh3RNKNaG

Headphone users beware

FWIW Knuth himself doesn't think this happened nor does he sound like the kind of person (to me) who would try to cut someone down like that: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zJOS0sV2a24&t=26m

⬐ jsmith45

More likely Knuth made an earnest comment about being impressed about reading all his books.

That comment was then misinterpreted as sarcasm, which is what the folklore author remembered. Later having forgotten the words, and only remembering the mistaken interpretation's overall feel, it was paraphrased, poorly.

⬐ ravishi

I like this response because it doesn't put the blame into anyone.

⬐ Sileni

Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.

⬐ nerflad

Or entropy. (In this case, social entropy?)

Google has some pretty good software for this, thought it might be internal. When they have their "Talks at Google" events, there's a screen off to the side that provides real-time translated subtitles.

There's at least one talk where the speaker addresses this system, and tries to get it to transcribe funny stuff. Can't remember which one exactly, but it might be this one with Randall Munroe (xkcd).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJOS0sV2a24&list=UUbmNph6atA...

It was this one, starts at around 15 minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJOS0sV2a24

Very good talk overall.

⬐ None

None

To me, one of the all-time great geek moments was when Munroe did a tech talk at Google, and Don Knuth gets up to ask him if he's thought about doing animated cartoons, and what is his favorite log log n sorting algorithm, about 21:30 in to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJOS0sV2a24

There's a talk by Randall Munroe (xkcd) at google where this is debunked by Knuth himself. It also features him being asked questions about Python by Guido.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJOS0sV2a24

YES!!! I was literally searching everywhere for this only 1 week ago and determined that there was nothing good out there.

Relevant: http://youtu.be/zJOS0sV2a24?t=4m

Now, if only there was a way to enter 2 addresses (for spouses/roommates) and have it give you the places with the best cumulative commute times. EDIT: Just saw Mapnificent does this!

Would also love to see this fully integrated into http://padmapper.com.

⬐ dctoedt

Hat tip: http://pgraycode.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/solving-xkcds-nerd...

This story is the subject of a fascinating exchange between Knuth and Randall Munroe in Munroe's Authors@Google talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJOS0sV2a24#t=25m25s

Knuth neither confirms nor outright denies the story, but says "I've only met [Jobs] a couple of times and in each case I was impressed by him probably more than he was impressed by me".

⬐ MarkSweep

You can modify youtube links to go to specific times: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJOS0sV2a24#t=25m25s

⬐ tomhoward

Awesome, thanks.

Maybe Knuth was more of a rebel back in the day, but somehow I can't imagine him having that sort of response.

In Randall Munroe's Authors@Google talk [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJOS0sV2a24], Don Knuth asks him a question at ~21:30 and at ~25:30 Randall asks Knuth about this very anecdote. Knuth's response is "I've been told this story a number of times...but I was impressed by him more than he was impressed by me."

⬐ arasakik

He mentioned that the "sudo make me a sandwich" was seen at Amazon. I don't know if there were other people who also did this, but I believe that it was my drawing he was talking about - I copied it onto a giant whiteboard in the hallway :)

⬐ SwellJoe

Yes, Knuth showed up for the event...and I had an invite to go to the event from one of the Authors@Google team, and I would have been sitting within a chair or two of him had I gone. But, I slept in. Long night of banging my head on JavaScript the night before...sometimes it pays to get to bed at a reasonable hour.

⬐ brianm

Umh, was that Knuth asking him about his log(log(n)) search algorithm?

⬐ tocomment

Is that possible?

⬐ jey

For comparison-based sorts, no. There are some good links if you google "lower bound of comparison-based sorting algorithms".

Knuth's question was a joking reference to http://xkcd.com/342/

⬐ tocomment

Thanks. The comic doesn't mention what the algorithm does. I thought I heard "search" in the lecture not sort.

⬐ jey

Oops, you're right, the 2nd-to-last panel is talking about A* and Dijkstra's search algorithms, but it's not clear what the last panel refers to. I just idiotically had assumed that the last panel was referring to sorting algorithms.

⬐ kyro

Yes!

⬐ icky

The real question is: did he come on his own, or did some Googler call him up and get him to come as a prank on Randall?

⬐ tlrobinson

Was that... Knuth?!

⬐ eru

I was flabbergasted, too.

⬐ None

None

⬐ BrandonM

One of my favorite parts was at 35:20 when he appeared visibly shaken that Google had produced typewritten data for the experiment he had performed a couple days ago. "Okay, what's this.... [15 second pause] How did this get here?! This was like two nights ago on a piece of paper."

Some of the other parts I liked:

5:45 - [Describes a scheme to create a map showing transit times surrounding an area, which will require about 500,000 page requests from Google Maps] ...and that had been running for a while. And then I went and read the terms of service...

21:15 - Python is basically executable pseudocode, and if that's the case, then Perl is executable line noise.

22:35 - We're gonna move away from talking about the searching algorithms for a moment now...

25:35 - You know, maybe you can actually verify this, because on Wikipedia.... This story is on Wikipedia, because I looked it up, and I think there is a "citation needed" tag attached to it.

30:25 - If a raptor were to attack me in this room, how would I escape? There is a lot of glass; I've noticed this coming in...

34:10 - Which word are you offended by: "bitches" or "science"?

39:50 - Actually, the first IRC channel... Oh man, why am I telling this story? The first IRC channel I hung out in... it was a... actually a fan fiction IRC channel. Erotic fan fiction...

49:00 - The "sudo make me a sandwich".... It was, I think, at Microsoft, too. Although, I mean, Microsoft? Why would they be using sudo(8)?