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Stanford Lecture: Don Knuth—"A Conjecture That Had To Be True" (2017)
Stanford Online
Donald Knuth's 2017 Christmas Tree Lecture at Stanford about a combinatorial geometry problem whose computed numbers matched a striking formula. He tells the story of the conjecture and its sequel.
HN fans love it for Knuth's humor and for how he makes open math problems feel approachable, and it is often cited for details like dancing links and counting rectangle subdivisions.
9 Hacker News mentions · 2017–2023