Transcript of a Donald Knuth interview (2006)

Dr. Knuth did a Q&amp;A session at UBC earlier this year, which was open to the public for free, on a first-come first-serve basis. I was able to score a seat.<p>He was a wonderful and thoughtful speaker, and did his best to answer questions about a huge variety of topics. He spoke with energy and enthusiasm. I felt quite lucky for getting the chance to see him in the flesh.<p>I know there is video of the session, but I&#x27;m not sure if UBC ever published it.

Something in the second &quot;chapter&quot; jumped out at me: apparently Knuth was reading at age 2 and a half. I have two sons, aged two and three, and the thought that they would read seems completely unthinkable to me. However, this is the second time I&#x27;ve read this about someone this week (there was a story about a boy genius who was admitted to MIT at age 15 on HN recently). In both cases, the parents taught their kids reading at an extremely early age.<p>So I wonder: Am I just underestimating the mental capacity of a 2 year old? Should I teach my kids more challenging things than playing with dough?<p>Or is there already such an incredible variance at age two, that there are children who can learn to read at a time when my kids are just getting the hang of basic grammar?

There&#x27;s really no reason to, you know, for the transcription to include every filler word and little, you know, rewording. In fact, it makes the, I think it makes it really hard to read.

Interesting to see how he became &quot;good&quot;.<p><i>&quot;I worked the supplementary problems. I was, you know, I was scared I wouldn’t learn calculus, so I worked hard on it ... But after a year, I could do all of those problems in the same time as my classmates were doing the assigned problems, and after that I could just coast in mathematics&quot;</i><p>Is this another nail in the coffin for the myth of genius?