Invited Talks
Don Knuth
Professor Emeritus of The Art of Computer Programming at Stanford University
ALL QUESTIONS ANSWERED
ALL QUESTIONS ANSWERED
August 3, 2022, 9:00 AM (IDT)
Talk abstract:During the past two years, the speaker has been drafting Section 7.2.2.3 of The Art of Computer Programming, which is intended to be a solid introduction to techniques for solving Constraint Satisfaction Problems. The CP 2022 conference is an excellent opportunity for him to get feedback from the leading experts on the subject, and so he was delighted to learn that the organizers were also interested in hearing a few words from him.
Rather than giving a canned lecture, he much prefers to
let the audience choose the topics, and for all questions
to be kept a secret from him until the lecture is actually
in progress. (He believes that people often learn more from
answers that are spontaneously fumbled than from responses
that are carefully preplanned.)
Questions related to constraints will naturally be
quite welcome, but questions on any subject whatsoever
will not be ducked! He'll try to answer them all as best he can,
without spending a great deal of time on any one topic, unless
there is special interest to go into more depth.
Meanwhile he hopes to have drafted some notes for circulation
before the conference begins, in case some attendees might wish
to focus some of their questions on expository material
related to his forthcoming book, either during this session
or informally afterwards.
Warning: His least favorite questions have the form "What is
your favorite X?" If you want to ask such questions, please
try to do it cleverly so that he doesn't have to choose
between different things that he loves in different ways.