Editing Donald Knuth (section)

===Humor===
[[File:knuth-check2.png|thumb|right|One of [[Knuth reward check|Knuth's reward checks]]]]
Knuth used to pay a [[finder's fee]] of $2.56 for any typographical errors or mistakes discovered in his books, because "256 pennies is one [[hexadecimal]] dollar", and $0.32 for "valuable suggestions". According to an article in the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]]'s ''Technology Review'', these [[Knuth reward check]]s are "among computerdom's most prized trophies". Knuth had to stop sending real checks in 2008 due to bank fraud, and now gives each error finder a "certificate of deposit" from a publicly listed balance in his fictitious "Bank of [[San Serriffe]]".<ref>{{Cite journal |url=https://www.technologyreview.com/1999/09/01/236540/rewriting-the-bible-in-0s-and-1s/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220709180448/https://www.technologyreview.com/1999/09/01/236540/rewriting-the-bible-in-0s-and-1s/ |url-status=live |archive-date=2022-07-09 |title=Rewriting the Bible in 0s and 1s |journal=[[Technology Review]] }}</ref>

He once warned a correspondent, "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."<ref name="faq"/>

Knuth published his first "scientific" article in a school magazine in 1957 under the title "The [[Potrzebie]] System of Weights and Measures". In it, he defined the [[fundamental unit]] of [[length]] as the thickness of ''[[Mad (magazine)|Mad]]'' No. 26, and named the fundamental unit of [[force]] "whatmeworry". ''Mad'' published the article in issue No. 33 (June 1957).<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Knuth |first=Donald Ervin |title=The Potrzebie System of Weights & Measures |url=https://www.madcoversite.com/mad033.html |magazine=Mad Magazine |date=June 1957 |issue=33 |access-date=March 26, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181106194253/https://madcoversite.com/mad033.html |archive-date=November 6, 2018 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref name="kidder">{{cite book |title=A Truck Full of Money |last=Kidder |first=Tracy |author-link=Tracy Kidder |publisher=[[Random House]] |page=68 |date=2016 |isbn=9780812995244}}</ref>

To demonstrate the concept of [[recursion]], Knuth intentionally referred "Circular definition" and "Definition, circular" to each other in the index of ''[[The Art of Computer Programming]], Volume 1''.

The preface of ''[[Concrete Mathematics]]'' has the following paragraph:{{blockquote|When DEK taught Concrete Mathematics at Stanford for the first time, he explained the somewhat strange title by saying that it was his attempt to teach a math course that was hard instead of soft.  He announced that, contrary to the expectations of his colleagues, he was ''not'' going to teach the Theory of Aggregates, nor [[Stone's representation theorem for Boolean algebras|Stone's Embedding Theorem]], nor even the [[Stone–Čech compactification]]. (Several students from the civil engineering department got up and quietly left the room.)}}

At the TUG 2010 Conference, Knuth announced a satirical [[XML]]-based successor to TeX, titled "iTeX" ({{IPA|en|iː˨˩˦tɛks˧˥⸨bell⸩|pron|generic=yes}}, spoken while ringing a bell), which would support features such as arbitrarily scaled irrational units, [[3D printing]], input from seismographs and heart monitors, animation, and stereophonic sound.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://river-valley.zeeba.tv/media/conferences/tug-2010/Don-Knuth/ | type=conference panel video|title=TUG 2010|year=2010 |first=Don |last=Knuth |publisher=Zeeba TV  |access-date=March 26, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160325191535/http://river-valley.zeeba.tv/media/conferences/tug-2010/Don-Knuth/ |archive-date=March 25, 2016 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Citation |type=video recording |last=Knuth |first=Donald Ervin |url=http://river-valley.zeeba.tv/an-earthshaking-announcement/ |publisher=Zeeba TV |title=An Earth-shaking announcement}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Knuth |first=Donald Ervin |year=2010 |journal=[[TUGboat]] |volume=31 |title=An Earthshaking Announcement |pages=121–24 |issue=2 |issn=0896-3207 |url=https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb31-2/tb98knut.pdf |access-date=March 26, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190413164834/http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb31-2/tb98knut.pdf |archive-date=April 13, 2019 |url-status=live }}</ref>