[LEAPSECS] drift of TAI

[Rob Seaman]

Knuth has been quite an idiosyncratic seeker after truth, himself :-)

Not sure why this thread is reviving now (the continued drift of TAI?)  
but I see I previously resisted the obvious rejoinder that since it  
was a monarch who was pursuing this agenda, it proved my assertion  
about his being a nutjob.

One remains skeptical that even a grandee such as Carl XII would have  
successfully managed to convince the hoi polloi to adopt octal over  
decimal.  Consider the requirements of international trade, for one  
thing.

Does anyone "read" Knuth?  If we're moving on to book lists about  
measurement theory and data representation, I can strongly recommend  
Widrow and Kollár's "Quantization Noise", just published.  Also  
"Lavoisier in the Year One", by Madison Smartt Bell, is a good little  
cautionary tale.

Rob
--

On Sep 27, 2008, at 3:07 AM, Magnus Danielson wrote:


> Rob Seaman wrote:

>> On Sep 15, 2008, at 8:23 AM, Magnus Danielson wrote:

>>> There where plans for converting Sweden to a base 8 country, but I  

>>> don't

>>> have the TAOCP I need at hand to give the details.

>> This sounds like either an urban legend or some isolated...

>

> You obviously haven't read Donald Knuths "The Art of Computer  

> Programming; Seminumerical Algorithms" (Vol 2) where chapter 4.1  

> would be an interesting reading on the topic of number systems.  

> Prof. Knuth is  fairly keen on researching his stuff.

>

> Charles XII of Sweden (Carl XII in swedish texts) had the idea of  

> radix-8 arithmetic 1717 but was killed in a battle before he could  

> convert this idea into reality. He met Liebniz in 1707, but it is  

> not known if Liebniz work on binary numbers was discussed or known  

> to Carl.

>

> I just didn't have that book at hand when I wrote that reference,  

> but it was a quick thing to look up now as I have it at hand.

>

> > how do you say "nut job" in Swedish?

>

> There are many ways to say it. I am not sure I can properly convey  

> it in the 1717 lingo thougth. I think you are best served in this  

> instance by learning what we call a nutter... "galenpanna". I think  

> you would need to learn some grammar and more words to propperly use  

> it in a meaningfull way thought.

>

>> Another example would be the Indiana legislature voting on pi=3.

>

> Don't bring US local legislation into this...

>

> Cheers,

> MAgnus

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