The Art of Computer Programming (6 books)
Original price was: $499.99.$49.99Current price is: $49.99.
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&>The bible of all fundamental algorithms and the work that taught many of today’s software developers most of what they know about computer programming.
—Byte, September 1995
I can’t begin to tell you how many pleasurable hours of study and recreation they have afforded me! I have pored over them in cars, restaurants, at work, at home… and even at a Little League game when my son wasn’t in the line-up.
—Charles Long
If you think you’re a really good programmer… read [Knuth’s] Art of Computer Programming… You should definitely send me a resume if you can read the whole thing.
—Bill Gates
It’s always a pleasure when a problem is hard enough that you have to get the Knuths off the shelf. I find that merely opening one has a very useful terrorizing effect on computers.
—Jonathan Laventhol
This first volume in the series begins with basic programming concepts and techniques, then focuses more particularly on information structures—the representation of information inside a computer, the structural relationships between data elements and how to deal with them efficiently. Elementary applications are given to simulation, numerical methods, symbolic computing, software and system design. Dozens of simple and important algorithms and techniques have been added to those of the previous edition. The section on mathematical preliminaries has been extensively revised to match present trends in research.
41 reviews for The Art of Computer Programming (6 books)
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Henrik Sandin (verified owner) –
This book offers a stringent treatment of random number generators and algorithms not found anywhere else. It is particularly valuable for those that deal with encryption and the analysis of cyphers. The exercises add admirably to the text. References to other books in the field are extensive. The book is written in a non-wordy, but still very readable style, making it accessible to serious computer scientists at all levels. A mathematical background is necessary.
S. Harris (verified owner) –
I recently modified a program I wrote so that it would do operations on polynomials with multi-precision coefficients. For this, I turned to Knuth. This 3-volume set is a great starting point for learning how to implement mathematical calculations on a machine.
Don’t listen to the “Reader” from CA. This person obviously has a bone to pick with Knuth. Maybe (s)he failed one of his classes. Maybe (s)he should write his/her own book on the subject.
skeptic (verified owner) –
All three volumes of The Art of Computer Programming (TAOCP), are classic. Each is a book that every CS student should try to study diligently reimplementing example after example. Not many will succeed to finish even a half of one volume, but if you do please buy all three of them and think about post-graduate studies :-).
I think the most important is to study the Vol 1. It gives enough exposition to the Donald Knuth style and brilliant thinking. While the content is definitely important it is the level of thinking of the author that represents the main value of the book: you instantly understand the book was written by a great scientist and it does not matter much that now the contents of most chapters can be significantly improved using more modern sources. After all Vol 1 is more then a 30 years old book (it is older then Unix) and as such it should be outdated (we all believe in progress, don’t we)… And it is not surprising that parts of Vol 1 on of TAOCP today look completely out of touch with reality especially MIX, the CPU instruction set that is used in all volumes.
Actually MIX instruction set (and thus assembler) was outdated even when the book was first published and more reflects unique Knuth’s background with IBM 650. It was far from the state of hardware development even in late 60th when the first volume was published, the period when IBM/360 was the king of the hill.
Now IBM 650, a 1,966 lb machine that consumed almost 30 Kw of electricity looks more like a primitive calculator than a real computer: typical installation has the memory of just 10,000 decimal digits ( 1,000 words; 10 digit per word).
It’s really sad that Knuth did not adopt System 360 architecture and PL/360 assembler (Wirth’s structured assembler for S/360) for his books but we can do nothing about it. Still this is a book about timeless truths, not the book about the resent CS fashion like Java or you name it :-). It actually can serve as a perfect antidote against any current CS fashion.
And Knuth does provide pseudocode with his natural language algorithm description. And natural language pseudocode has an important advantage over ‘structured pseudocode. The problem with a “structured pseudocode” is that the set of control structures is fixed and may not reflect the needs of a particular algorithms (branching out of loop is a common problem that is not addressed by structured programming well). Moreover it can cripple the algorithm by enforcing unnatural control structures, the structures that are absent in it but might be present in more modern languages. For example Perl has an interesting set of control structures that is superior to C. But even “Perl control structures set” can be improved further.
That’s why assembler language is preferable: it never obscures “natural” control structures for each algorithms, structures that one day can be mapped into some new elegant language construct. Also as one review noted “sometimes high level languages with all their abstractions make things look more complex than they need be.”
I would like to stress it again that each volume is very difficult to read; you really need to work on each chapter by reimplementing the examples that Knuth gives in your favorite language (assembler might help but is not essential).
Mathematical considerations as for average and worst running time of a particular algorithm can be largely ignored during the first couple of years of study of this book. Actually most mathematics in Vol. 1 can (and probably should) be initially completely ignored. See Softpanorama Classic Computer Books for more information.
On the negative side this is an overpriced book, if we are talking about students budget. To save money you can buy one of the first editions: there is not that much difference in content to justify the differences in price. The differences do not interfere with the study of the book. Knuth did an excellent work the first time he published each volume and for a significant improvement we probably need another century and another person.
Vincent Poirier (verified owner) –
Volume 2 of “The Art of Computer Programming” is about random numbers and also about relearning one of the three Rs from grade school, viz. arithmetic. Each topic gets one chapter.
When you generate random numbers in Excel, or VBA, or Perl, or C using functions packaged with the software, you are really using a deterministic algorithm that is not random at all; the results do however look random and so we call them “pseudorandom”.
Chapter 3 contains four main sections. First a section devoted to the linear congruence method (Xn+1=(aXn + c) mod m) of generating a pseudorandom sequence; with subsections on how to choose good values for a, c, and m. Second we get a section about how to test sequences to find if they are acceptably random or not. Third we find a section on other methods, expanding on linear congruence. Finally in a particularly fascinating section, DK provides a rigorous definition of randomness.
I haven’t looked much at chapter 4 yet, on arithmetic. In it Knuth covers positional arithmetic, floating point arithmetic, multiplication and division at the machine level, prime numbers and efficient ways of investigating the primeness of very large numbers.
Again, DK is thorough and methodical. Again this is not a for dummies book. Again it is about theorems, algorithms, mechanical processes, and timeless truths. Again the exercises are a fascinating blend of the practical (investigate the random generating functions on the computers in your office) to the mathematical (he asks readers to formally prove many of the theorems he cites). And yes, again Knuth uses MIX, that wonderfully archaic fictional 60s machine language. But that should not stop readers; I use Perl.
Vincent Poirier, Tokyo
wiredweird (verified owner) –
First the basics: it’s great, it provides wide-ranging and deep analysis, it shows many views and variants of each problem, and its bibliography is helpful, though not exhaustive. The historical notes, including sorts for drum storage, may seem quaint to modern readers. And sorting has been done, right? You just run a shell program or call a function, and tap into the best technology. Does it need to be done again?
Yes, if you’re on the edge of technology, it does need to be done again, and again, and again. That’s because technology keeps expanding, and violating old assumptions as it does. Memories got big enough that the million-record sort is now a yawn, where it used to be a journal article. But, at the same time, processor clocks got 100-1000x ahead of memory speeds. All of a sudden, those drum-based algorithms are worth another look, because yesteryear’s drum:memory ratios are a lot like today’s memory:cache ratios of size and speed – and who doesn’t want a 100x speedup? Parallel processing is moving from the supercomputing elite into laptops, causing more tremors in the ground rules. GPU and reconfigurable computing also open whole new realms of pitfalls as well as opportunities.
Knuth points out that the analyses have beauty in themselves, for people with eyes to see it. His analyses also demonstrate techniques applicable way beyond the immediate discussion, too. Today, though, I have nasty problems in technologies that no one really knows how to handle very well. I have to go back and check all the assumptions again, since so many of them changed. If that’s the kind of problem you have, too, then this is the place to start.
//wiredweird
Ed Pegg Jr (verified owner) –
Knuth has written many books considered classics. Some of the previous works have been set-up for where the real fun is – Combinatorics. In one of my own columns, I say “Never trust the brute-force power of a computer network to do the job of a combinatorialist.” In 1967, John P. Robinson and Arthur J. Bernstein published an optimal Golomb ruler with 24 marks (OGR24). Their solution was confirmed in 2004 by a massive distributed effort using tens of thousand of computer years.
Knuth is attempting to discuss all the algorithms that will still be important 50 years from now. The amount of speed given using these algorithms is staggering.
Some examples topics in the book:
Page 222 – Algorithm S: Breadth-first synthesis of BDDs
Page 293 – Balanced and Complementary Gray codes.
Page 424 – Stirling numbers and set partitions.
Page 449 – Generating binary trees
Helpful mathematical illustrations feature prominently throughout the book, and pretty much every page is gorgeously formatted. Knuth developed TeX in part to produce beautiful books, and that is on display here.
Many thoughtful questions are provided as an aid to learning these very useful techniques. The Answers section runs for 303 pages.
It will take me months or years to digest most the information in this work, but I can’t imagine a better presentation for this difficult but lucratively useful material.
Scott in LA (verified owner) –
Over 30 years, whew! I’m very pleased to be able to add this volume to the other three (I’ve had to replace volumes 1 and 3 because I wore out my first copies). And, I’m very glad I don’t have to complete a graduate course that would use this volume as a text, I’m not sure I’d have the stamina to make it though. Thank you, Dr. Knuth, for your guidance and challenges. They certainly made a significant difference in the success of my career. I’m sure that those of you who delve into this volume will be enlightened by it as well. I’m not qualified to technically critique or perhaps even understand a lot of the material in this book, but at least I’ll have the rest of my life to try. Now, doesn’t he still owe us one more?
Allyn Rothman (verified owner) –
For anyone who has the first three volumes of “The Art of Computer Programming”, a review of the fourth is completely unnecessary. If you don’t yet own the first three, buy the whole set of four at a significant discount. More than half of the 900 pages is “Answers to Exercises”, whose coverage of the topic is encyclopedic. If you want to know what Dr. Knuth has been doing the last 30 years, here is the answer. What is amazing is that this volume, number 4A, is evidently a prelude for more to come.
Alan Smithee (verified owner) –
This book is one of the hardest comp-sci books I’ve tried to go through. Like anything else in life, what you put into this book is what you get out of it. It can go a little over my head from time to time, but really, that’s a good thing. You’ll never learn to swim if you stand in the shallow end of the pool all your life.
Love to Read (verified owner) –
Donald E. Knuth – I am your biggest fan and this is one of my favorite books on algorithms. Don’t be intimated by its size and the number of volumes – this is a life work of one of the most brilliant computer scientists of all times. Love this book, thank you Donald Knuth.
Chris Knight (verified owner) –
It is impossible to overstate the importance of Knuth’s “algorithms” series. Every programmer needs to have access to these and needs to know how to look up algorithms in them and implement those algorithms in your language of choice. (And do give credit to Knuth in your comments.) If you don’t, you are not a programmer and certainly not a software engineer, and you will be condemned to reinvent wheel after wheel after wheel until you learn better.
L. Nogueira (verified owner) –
This book is amazing! I hope I will have the complete collection soon. Prof. Knuth is a genius, unnecessary to say…
Professor dot biz (verified owner) –
Question: Now that this is out, are all the items in the first 5 (part 4, 0-4) fascicles covered, or do I need them too?
A careful reading and comparison of both shows that although most of the topics are covered in both, as this “IS” the final publication with corrections of the fascicles, the fascicles add important background as well as detail, whereas 4A is a MUST due to the incredible number of new problems and answers. As a compromise if you’re on a budget, you could get 4A for all combinatorials, or, for example, get fascicle 0 if you’re more into logic design, circuits, etc. rather than all combinatorics. Do NOT buy all 5 fascicles AND this book, or you’ll be double paying. However, the fascicles, in the older form, are available as .pdfs free. THIS BOOK updates and corrects all of them, and is complete.
I can’t give all the contents for thousands of pages here, but if you go to Dr. Knuth’s website, there are uncorrected .pdf copies of the whole series, and an index of all past and future versions. Just Bing or Google the title with Volume 4A and choose the link that starts with cs dot utsa dot edu (Dr. Don’s site). The links come back here to Amazon for purchase, but give full uncorrected .pdfs to save you money on the previous fascicles as you compare them to this newer 2011 volume. That will also let you see in detail which, if any, of the previous fascicles you really want combined with 4A. Realize, though, that Dr. Knuth has corrected MANY sections in this 2011 combinatorial text, so even if you like the .pdfs of the previous sicles, you’ll clearly want 4A.
In fact, when you go to that site, there is even a “volume 5/part B” uncorrected fascicle available as an advance .pdf. The Stanford site even has a few more. It gives valuable math background on the coming new part 2 volumes (4B, 4C etc.) of combinatorics (click on “pre fascicle 5A”), namely many of the discrete probability spaces not covered in any of the previous volumes, yet much more important today than ever before. Disclaimed as a probably error copy for expert circulation pre publication, still, I’d take Knuth’s errors over most expert’s correct info!!! A great read to bring the current 2011 volume, as well as the original combinatorics volume (v 1 fascicle 1, 2/2005; p. 144), up to date on stochastics not covered until 2013.
With his usual humility, Knuth “apologizes” that he’s only now getting around to as important a topic as probability in the intro to 4B– basically apologizing for what NO ONE knew in the 60’s! He even asks if some of his earlier “not yet solved” problems might actually be solved with newer stochastic algorithms. He posts these updates both on his site and in the latest fascicles, so readers can stay up to date even on the cutting edge research. What a sweet man! Needless to say, you’ll love this volume along with the web content and augmenting fascicles.
Knuth, who is 76 at this writing, also disclaims that 4B, C, D etc. are health dependent. God bless and long life Doc.
UPDATE: Dr. Knuth emailed us with this update on both the fascicles and upcoming new features:
“…I can imagine that somebody would like to buy just
one of those five (…v4f0, v4f1, v4f2, v4f3, or v4f4), because
of special interest in (or maybe teaching a class about) just one
topic. Also, the stuff on pages 48–75 of v4f4 — the
historical survey of combinatorial generation — is the most
“reader friendly” part of the whole book, it can be appreciated
by non-specialists of many flavors; so as a small paperback it is
handier than the full 900-page book, in spite of some warts.
By the way, v1f1 is already out in eBook form, and we expect to have it
joined by Volumes 1, 2, 3, and 4A before October. We have taken special
pains to provide optimum cross-references (hyperlinks) within these
electronic versions, and to make searches work well (although some of the
current reader-apps aren’t real fast when searching in a 900-page eBook).”
Some what high (verified owner) –
This was a gift and the recipient loved it. It came in with excellent condition and arrived in time. BTW the recipient has a job related to the content of the book and hopefully this book had some positive effects.
Some what high (verified owner) –
This was a gift and the recipient loved it. It came in with excellent condition and arrived in time. BTW the recipient has a job related to the content of the book and hopefully this book had some positive effects.
Some what high (verified owner) –
this was a gift and the recipient loved it. It came in with excellent condition and arrived in time. BTW the recipient has a job related to the content of the book and hopefully this book had some positive effects.
PEDI (verified owner) –
A classic it remains. Worth the price and the time.
Clyde LeBonz (verified owner) –
Knuth. What more is there to say? Bought the first edition of Volume 1 back in 1970 and have dived sporadically into his work ever since, whenever I needed a better sort or randomization algorithm.
Just having Knuth on my bookshelf makes me feel a whole lot smarter.
PairOfDocs (verified owner) –
Classic text – used in data structures class years ago. Still quite relevant. The Kindle edition was extremely well done! The links available at the tap of a finger connect the dots quite nicely.
Josh Berry (verified owner) –
I can not make the claim that I have fully worked the exercises. Indeed, I have sadly barely touched them. However, I do feel like I learned something from this book every time I picked it up.
The writing style remains much more approachable than you probably think it is. Specifically, even the heavy math sections are fun to read through as an interested programmer. Sure, it is intimidating in that I don’t think I fully followed the thought process on many sections on my first read through. However, coming back and trying multiple times usually left me feeling like I at least understood what was being discussed. Even if I’m not quite sure, yet, that I could have hit on some of these ideas myself.
The section at the end on searching on secondary keys is a true delight. Just plain fun to consider the different tricks that can be done with data.
Gregory Casamento (verified owner) –
Come on… it’s Donald Knuth. What do you expect me to say? 🙂
Aleksandar Simovic (verified owner) –
What can you say except that Knuth is amazing & the book along with its whole series is legendary in the world of computer science
GCHEN (verified owner) –
it is very good
GCHEN (verified owner) –
it is very good
Steve Trapp (verified owner) –
Love Don Knuth’s stuff! Hope he gets more volumes written! He’s great. Very happy!
Juan Manuel Torres Lopez (verified owner) –
A classic in sorting
Austin Customer (verified owner) –
A leader in his field. Written so concepts are easy to understand. Good reference tool.
John (verified owner) –
Classic textbook and reference work. Don’t loan the books in this series, they don’t come back.
Phred (verified owner) –
Now I have a lot to digest in the 30 years since I read the original 3
Joshua Davies (verified owner) –
I started reading this book immediately after I finished reading volume 1. I loved volume 1, and I feel the same way about this one, although this was actually a very different sort of book. For one thing, this book was way more mathematical than the first. The first half of volume 1 was all math and the last half was all programming. This book, instead, is almost all math and practically no programming. The author starts by covering random number generators – both implementing and testing them (bet you didn’t know that you can actually test the randomness of a random number generator, did you? Knuth can spend a hundred pages showing you a dozen different ways!) This takes up about half the book (chapter 3), and then he moves on to discussing the implementation of arithmetic in computers. Again, you might think that this is worth maybe a dozen pages, but not for Knuth – he spends over two hundred pages discussing more tips and tricks for speeding up arithmetic than I would have guessed existed.
I attempted every single exercise in volume 1 and went into this one with the same intent. I got pretty close to at least trying each exercise; the last three sections, which covered exponents, polynomial evaluation and power series, went so deep that I ended up glossing over about half of the exercises in each section (the section on polynomial evaluation has over 70 exercises on its own). The exercises in this book were almost all more difficult, and more mathematically sophisticated, than volume 1 – I wouldn’t have believed that was possible, but every time you think you’ve gone as deep as you can possibly go, Knuth shows you that you’re just at the tip of the iceberg. I can’t say I solved exercise, but I did at least try almost all of them – don’t judge me until you try it yourself!
I did love this book, and enjoyed reading it, but I do think that this is one that a practicing programmer outside of very specific domains can probably safely skip – as fascinating as the topics are, and even after taking into consideration that this is not only the authoritative reference but in many cases the only printed material on some subjects – random number generation and lightning-fast (arbitrary precision) arithmetic aren’t topics that most programmers have to deal with too often. Still, if you have the time, it is a really fun book to work through.
Sensor2 (verified owner) –
This book will wake up the computer scientist in you!!
umn (verified owner) –
This book includes a lot of mathematical proofs and analyses of different sorting and searching algorithms. Good！
Paul Bruce Coursey (verified owner) –
Very good
David Evans (verified owner) –
A decent continuation of Knuth’s classic work, this goes into a sufficient level of depth that suits master and apprentice equally well.
Jocelyn Mukes (verified owner) –
Good book
Guitar hopeful (verified owner) –
What can I say? This book is a classic, but be ready to test your math skills.
Partime (verified owner) –
TAOCP is a fairly standard series for anyone seeking deep knowledge of algorithms and niche processes like text pattern matching. The book could have been constructed of better materials but we make do with what we get.
K (verified owner) –
My son’s best friend is graduating college. He wanted this set as a graduation present as he used it in college. It comes highly reccomended and give. This young man’s GPA I’ll take that as a strong indicator of its worth. If your serious about learning to program computers, don’t meddle around, get this set!
Arismar Sousa (verified owner) –
Sem comentários. Literatura obrigatória para quem quer ser programador de computadores.
ArthurDent (verified owner) –
I bought this for a family member when they started college in computer engineering. It’s not just a valuable resource it’s a collectors item because it’s by Knuth. For the computer engineer at any level this is a perfect gift.
ArthurDent (verified owner) –
Any serious student of computer science would be delighted to have this classical work, by one of the all-time greats, on their bookshelf. The binding looked solid, good paper quality, they will last for a couple of decades at least. It is a solid buy.