Today.

[swestrup]

Today, I went to the Knuth lecture. It stank. The man talked about work he had done in 1960-1968, most of which was both obvious, and pointless.

_sps_ could give an unprepared presentation on notation that would blow Knuth's away, with the organ of your choice tied behind his back.

There was one question asked from the audience about the design of new notation systems and research avenues on metanotations, and Knuth as much as said he knows nothing about it. All he was there to talk about were a few shortcut notations that he has found useful in the restricted bits of the math sphere he works in. Whoopee.

Don't get me wrong. I think Knuth has done a LOT for computer science and I fully plan to buy his new books on the Art of Computer Programming when they come out. His mathematics is good, and his knowledge of discrete math is phenomenal. But his understanding of notation is zilch. At least this explains the question I didn't have the guts to ask: Why is your choice of notation in your books so bad?

Grumph. So, I now count this as a day almost entirely wasted. Double Grumph.

Comments

[denizsarikaya.livejournal.com]

What He Said.

Painful, indeed. I wanted to stay so I could hear if there were any good questions. Thanks for letting me know how it ended.

Reminds me of how disappointed I was with the Q&A period in Steve Mann's last talk.

[sps.livejournal.com]

No! No! Not the spleen! Aaaaaarrrrrgggggghhhhhhhhhh!

[swestrup]

Note that I didn't state that it would be one of *your* organs.

[sps.livejournal.com]

Ah, blessed relief! Though I'm still squeamish about the spleens.

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

So apparently no Knuth IS good Knuth...