30 Years of Donald Knuth's 'Christmas Lectures' Are Online - Including 2023's

"It's like visiting an old friend for the holidays," according to this article: Approaching his 86th birthday, Donald Knuth — Stanford's beloved computer science guru — honored what's become a long-standing tradition. He gave a December "Christmas lecture" that's also streamed online for all of his fans...

More than 60 years ago, back in 1962, a 24-year-old Donald Knuth first started writing The Art of Computer Programming — a comprehensive analysis of algorithms which, here in 2023, he's still trying to finish. And 30 years ago Knuth also began making rare live appearances each December in front of audiences of Stanford students...

Recently Stanford uploaded several decades of Knuth's past Christmas lectures, along with a series of 22 videos of Knuth from 1985 titled "the 'Aha' Sessions'" (courses in mathematical problem-solving). There are also two different sets of five videos from 1981 showing Knuth introducing his newly-created typesetting system TeX. There are even 12 videos from 1982 of what Knuth calls "an intensive course about the internal details."

And on Dec. 6, wearing his traditional brown holiday sweater, Knuth gave yet another live demonstration of the beautifully clear precision that's made him famous.

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[drainbramage]

And the Holy Trinity: Base, Collector, Emitter

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[Toad-san]

I thought it was the Unholy Trinity!

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[drainbramage]

People too weak to face up to their own irrelevance: Post as Anonymous Coward
Oh, wait minute. Drat!

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[2TecTom]

Only primitives believe in imaginary sky friends, people too weak to face up to their own irrelevance.

It seems only fundamentalists have trouble grappling with concepts like externalism, existentialism, metaphysics,multidimensionalism, nihilism and theology. Not only that but to dismiss it all so they can apparently feel superior to those they see as merely superstitious seems suspect.

Just saying.

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[david.emery]

your lord Jesus Christ
Well, I didn't vote for him! https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

1964 is more than 60 years ago?

[ihadafivedigituid]

Someone can't do math. If Knuth is 86 now, how could he be 24 in 1964? How did they bungle the simple computation of how long ago 1964 was?

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[ihadafivedigituid]

I should have watched the 1993 video before commenting.

Why on Earth are these lectures noteworthy? Knuth is a meandering, confusing, and inarticulate lecturer.

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[Calydor]

Have you forgotten just how long 2020 was?

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[ihadafivedigituid]

Hah, I can't decide if it was super short or ultra long. Both?

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[backslashdot]

Not sure if they edited it, but it (now?) says 1962 not 1964.

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[ihadafivedigituid]

Now I wonder if this was a glitch in the Matrix or if I misread it six or seven times.

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[drainbramage]

Yeah weird, I thought his birthday was 1970-01-01.

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[gosso920]

Blame it on the metric system.

Presidential Medal of Freedom

[holostagram]

He should be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom post haste. He has likely done more to advance our society than anyone living. Somehow he did this without requiring capital markets to give him billions of dollars.

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[Valgrus Thunderaxe]

Not more than Musk.

Reminds me of a U.W. Tradition

[Dusanyu]

Professor Bassam Z. Shakhashiri for 50 years has given a Chemistry Lecture around Christmas time for children at UW Madison last year's can be seen here http://scifun.org/xmaslect/Xma... [scifun.org] some of the older one can be viewed here. https://digital.sciencehistory... [sciencehistory.org]

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[bob_herrick]

At Brown University, Professor Emeritus Josiah T. Carberry had failed to show up to any of his scheduled lectures since the mid-1920s. This makes him immensely popular among undergraduates.

G. R. R. Knuth

[jd]

Donald Knuth is never going to finish A Song of Fire and Algorithms at this rate.

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[ihadafivedigituid]

Well played, very well played indeed. :-)