Knuth is 70

Donald Knuth is seventy. The four posts I've linked to say more about this than I can.

In his honor, I hope to take a class in the analysis of algorithms this term. (Okay, I was planning to anyway.) In fact, just now I got it approved that I could take this class. It's not in my department, so doing so required a couple e-mails -- but the analysis of algorithms is a legitimate field of mathematics. I'm not going to explain why here, because in doing so I would probably just say lots of foolish things that I don't fully understand. This is why I'm taking the class -- I am interested in the analysis of algorithms but I don't know much about it.

I hope that one day I have enough money that I feel like I can give $2.56 to everybody who catches a mistake that I make and not be bankrupted by this. (Knuth gives this amount -- "one hexadecimal dollar" -- to anyone who finds an error in one of his books.) I would be willing to adopt such a scheme right now if all other authors adopted it as well, though; since I read much more than I write I'm reasonably sure I'd come out ahead -- so long as I was the only one eligible to receive such money. (Is there anybody who reads less than they write? That seems like it would be a very strange state of affairs.) However, if all other authors adopted such a scheme they would probably also be more diligent in proofreading their work, and I'd have competition for finding the errors; in the end some sort of equilibrium would be reached among all people who read and/or write, and I'm not sure whether I would end up paying out more in such bounties than I take in.