[nickdrozd]

Great post. Some general takeaways for people who want Knuth checks:

1. You are unlikely to find errors in the algorithms themselves, especially if they've been officially published. You might find some infelicities, but these are not counted as full errors. For example, the author here found some confusing-but-not-wrong comments about local variables and unused registers. These are counted as "suggestions" (worth 0x20¢) rather than "errors" (worth 0x$1.00).

2. Knuth is pretty generous with credit -- if your suggestion leads him to find an error, you get credit for the error. The author here said that some defined variables went unused. Knuth pointed out that those variables were in fact used in an exercise. However, in looking this up he noticed a variable-related error in that exercise. Author is credited with 0x$1.00!

3. Exercises are more likely to contain errors and infelicities than the main text. And there are an awful lot of exercises.

4. Knuth includes a whole bunch of stuff in his books that is not related to CS. Lots of weird trivia and references. This stuff is more likely to be wrong than the main text. For example, Knuth mentions "icosahedral objects inscribed with Greek letters" and includes a reference to an article in the Bulletin de l’Institut français du Caire. But the author points out that the article is actually in the Bulletin de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale. Whoops! 0x$1.00 for you!

[dalke]

I found an error in a published version of TAOCP, 2nd edition I think, with improvements on Sieve of Eratosthenes. I was so excited, then found it was already listed in the errata.

I later got a check for identifying a minor issue with the early history of superimposed coding. I happen to have copies of the relevant patent case containing examples predating Mooers' randomized superimposed coding.

("Happened to" because I had visited the Mooers archive at the Charles Babbage Institute in Minnesota to research some of the early history of chemical information management. Mooers is one of the "fathers" of information retrieval, and in fact coined the term "information retrieval" at a chemistry conference.)

[Tomte]

Don't make assumptions about what parts must have been combed through so much that there is no chance of finding annerror.

I found one and got my cheque on page Arabic one in one of his books. Paragraph one. First sentence. The very first word.

[eigenvalue]

Was it the word “the” instead of “a”? Trying to think what else it could even be.

[hinkley]

Knuth has the Pablo Picasso’s Dinner Bill “Problem” and so can afford to be generous.

Picasso used to dine and dash as it were by drawing a doodle on the back of his check when the bill came due, and often enough the owner would choose to frame the check instead of cash it.

For a long time most of the cost of writing checks to Knuth is the writing of the checks, not the cashing of them. He’s paying for X00 checks at a time and the energy to fill them out. And anyone who had gotten their first check from him would not cash it.

Though these days I can cash a check via a phone app and so I don’t need to forfeit the check to get the money.

[fastasucan]

>Though these days I can cash a check via a phone app and so I don’t need to forfeit the check to get the money.

Its incredible that both of these technologies is in active use at the same time.

[bombcar]

They’re not “real” checks anymore (unless you insist) because of check fraud issues. Bank of San Serif isn’t a real bank.

[zozbot234]

> ... includes a reference to an article in the Bulletin de l’Institut français du Caire. But the author points out that the article is actually in the Bulletin de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale. Whoops! 0x$1.00 for you!

I do wonder whether this is more likely to be a case where the journal actually changed its name over time (perhaps because the Institut itself did) and then made the older papers available under the new name - which would mean both references are ultimately correct.

[skissane]

I don't think so. The article links to an image of the 1930 journal article – https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b53180372w – it doesn't look like it has been republished, it looks like something close to the original publication

I don't completely know what is going on here, but I guess it is something like this: the institute has since 1898 officially been called Institut français d'archéologie orientale, and its journal has always officially been called Bulletin de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale. However, historically, people would sometimes add du Caire (in Cairo) to the institute's name (to specify its location) – this habit was supported by the history that, prior to 1898, the institute (or its predecessor) was called École française du Caire (French School of Cairo) – and then unofficially abbreviate it from Institut français d'archéologie orientale du Caire to Institut français d'archéologie du Caire or even Institut français du Caire. And since the journal is named for the institution, once people got in the habit of unofficially abbreviating the name of the institution, they applied the same habit to the journal.

So Bulletin de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale has always been the official name of the journal, but Bulletin de l’Institut français du Caire is a historical unofficial alternative name.

As I said, I'm just speculating, I don't really know. But this seems more plausible to me than the journal or institute changing its name, because I can't find any evidence of any name change since 1898, which was long before the publication of the 1930 article.