snallygaster
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 Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2005 1:45 pm Post subject: interview with computer giant Don Knuth |
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Copyright 2005 National Public Radio (R)
National Public Radio (NPR)
SHOW: Morning Edition 10:00 AM EST NPR
March 14, 2005 Monday
HEADLINE: Donald Knuth's The Art Of Computer Programming
ANCHORS: STEVE INSKEEP
REPORTERS: DAVID KESTENBAUM
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
When Donald Knuth needs the power of a super computer, he has a resource that many others don't. Knuth can call up the folks at Google. They often let him tap into the same machines that search the entire Internet. Knuth is legendary in the computer science world for writing a series of reference books called The Art Of Computer Programming. They're part cookbook, part textbook, part encyclopedia, and it's hard to escape the feeling that they are also works of art. For this week's look at the connections between science and art, NPR's David Kestenbaum visited Knuth at his house. He's in Palo Alto, California, working on Volume 4.
DAVID KESTENBAUM reporting:
"The Art Of Computer Programming" books are all about the most efficient way for a computer to get something done. The general notion is captured in Knuth's kitchen, though. He and his wife designed it using a branch of mathematics called graph theory to plan what should go next to what, the toaster, the fridge, the stove.
Mr. DONALD KNUTH ("The Art Of Computer Programming"):
The most important thing in the kitchen was the wastebasket. Everything wanted to be next to the wastebasket. So now our kitchen has a centrally located wastebasket which you can easily toss things into from any direction.
(Soundbite of footsteps)
KESTENBAUM: Go up to the second floor, and on a shelf, you'll find multiple
copies of "The Art Of Computer Programming" books, ones that translate into Russia, one in Japanese, Chinese, Hungarian, Spanish, German, Polish and Romanian. Inside the books are ideas that transcend language, the essential grammar for constructing fast, elegant computer programs. What's the quickest way to sort a list of names? You'll find hundreds of pages on that in Volume 3. Best way to divide two numbers? That's Volume 2.
(Soundbite of pages turning)
Mr. KNUTH:
Page 235 to 240, and so here we have discussion of things that I learned in fourth grade, I think.
KESTENBAUM:
Is that the most efficient way to do it?
Mr. KNUTH:
Nope. No, but this would be the best way to do long division until you have numbers that are maybe a million digits, and then you start to use much more clever ways. You change the problem.
KESTENBAUM:
Knuth's admirers describe him as a founding father of computer science. He pushed the idea that computer programs could be mathematically analyzed, refined and made perfect like poems, that there was a best way, an optimal algorithm, for every task. Volume one of "The Art Of Computer Programming" appeared back in 1968. Those were the days when computers were larger than cars. Knuth felt the embryonic field needed a central repository of knowledge and he sketched out grand plans for seven books, but now over three decades later, Knuth is just completing Volume 4. He's 67 years old and works on the project constantly. The field of computer science is expanding almost faster than he can write and compile.
(Soundbite of computer keyboard)
KESTENBAUM:
Knuth is tall, thin, dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt. This morning's task is sorting things that will go into upcoming chapters. Knuth steers a book cart loaded with technical papers down the hall and into a kind of a home library which contains shelf after shelf of neatly organized folders. Knuth has managed to relate some unlikely topics to computer science. You can see that from the words scrawled on the folders.
Mr. KNUTH:
Algebra, animation, Arabic language, asymptotics, axioms, bar
coding. I've got about 15,000 items in these folders, and I'm going to have to boil this down into the final books.
KESTENBAUM:
I'm reminded of Samuel Johnson in the 1700s compiling his dictionary of the English language. Knuth's books are personal, idiosyncratic and beautifully laid out. You will rarely find a word hyphenated at the end of a line. That's because he's spent 10 years developing what is inarguably the most sophisticated typesetting program. He once published a mathematical treatise on the shape of the letter S. Somewhere in a folder here is a short play written by a computer that appeared in Volume 2. Another folder contains papers on the golden ratio which relates to how quickly certain search strategies work. It also happens to relate to this odd discovery which will end up in the books.
Mr. KNUTH:
OK. Betsy Ross' five-pointed star. My wife found on the Web this nice page that says how to cut a five-pointed star with one snip of the scissors. It starts out, it says, `Take a thin piece of paper eight and a half inches by 10 inches and fold it in a certain way and then cut with the scissors, ' and I
worked out that actually instead of eight and a half by 10, it should be eight
and a half by 9.992349 inches which is actually 17 times the sign of pi over
five. So Betsy Ross, if she really knew this, was amazingly close.
KESTENBAUM:
Even among very smart math and computer types, Knuth is considered a quick study. He occasionally gives lectures titled "All Questions Answered" where he serves as a kind of gentle oracle, but Knuth prefers to think of himself as one of many bricklayers.
Mr. KNUTH:
People think that computer science just is the work of a few geniuses, but the fact is absolutely the opposite, that there are just thousands and thousands of people doing things that build on each other and it's like having a wall made of many stones.
KESTENBAUM: The wall, however, needs constant tending. Knuth says that when he started writing the books, he knew there would be errors. A solution would was to offer a small bounty for each mistake someone finds. Knuth's checkbook contains the names of famous mathematicians who caught real errors and master nitpickers who caught typos. Each spotted mistake earns a handwritten check for $2.56. That's a little joke. 2.56 written in the binary language of computers looks like 10 million, a one followed by seven zeroes.
Mr. KNUTH:
Over the years, I've written checks for more than $20,000. This goes back more than 35 years, but people don't cash them as much as they used to.
KESTENBAUM:
Some people frame them and put them on the wall. With every correction, the book inches toward perfection. When the second printing of Volume 1 came out, 90 percent of the pages had changed.
Mr. KNUTH: And this gives us a kick to know that we're all contributing to the enterprise, that we're competing against ignorance.
KESTENBAUM:
Knuth does stop to eat occasionally or play the pipe organ in the living room and presumably he sleeps.
Mr. KNUTH:
When I'm brushing my teeth, you know, I'm thinking, `OK. There's eight parts to my mouth. There's the upper teeth and the lower teeth. There's the inside and the outside. You know, there's a left side and a right side, but maybe it's best if I, you know, first do all the upper parts, you know? You know, you only switch from left to right,' and there's ways to amuse yourself while you're doing things and that's the way I look at efficiency, is it's an amusing thing to think about but not that I'm obsessed that it's got to be efficient or else I'll go crazy.
KESTENBAUM:
After lunch, Knuth bikes over to Stanford University. He helped found the computer science department there. He swims laps in the pool and looks up a paper in the math library. He wears his bike helmet indoors because, well, he's going to have to put it back on a little later anyway. Knuth long ago gave up e-mail. It was too much of a distraction. He moves in general with a kind of steady urgency that seems to say, `My time on Earth is limited and there is much to do, including four more volumes of essential knowledge to write.'
Do you believe in God?
Mr. KNUTH:
Oh, yes, I do. I mean, I felt a call to write this book in some sense. It was something that I think would be bad if it could be proved because then I wouldn't have to think about God anymore.
KESTENBAUM: You mean if it could be proved that God existed?
Mr. KNUTH:
Yeah. If there was a proof, you know, OK, I'd memorize the proof and then I'd go on, you know, and forget about it. So the fact that there's a mystery there challenging, you know, it actually has deep meanings for me fairly often.
KESTENBAUM:
To some in the field, "The Art of Computer Programming" is a kind of bible. God does not appear in the index, but Knuth often kicks off new chapters with a philosophical quote--one from Shakespeare, one from a cookbook and this from the 19th century writer Thomas Carlisle: Books are triviality. Life alone is great. David Kestenbaum, NPR News.
INSKEEP: This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
_________________
Never argue with stupid people.
They'll just drag you down to their level
and then beat you with experience. |
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