JargonFile/entries/HAKMEM.txt

HAKMEM

/hakmem/ , n. MIT AI Memo 239 (February 1972). A legendary collection of
neat mathematical and programming hacks contributed by many people at MIT
and elsewhere. (The title of the memo really is HAKMEM , which is a
6-letterism for hacks memo. ) Some of them are very useful techniques,
powerful theorems, or interesting unsolved problems, but most fall into the
category of mathematical and computer trivia. Here is a sampling of the
entries (with authors), slightly paraphrased: Item 41 (Gene Salamin): There
are exactly 23,000 prime numbers less than 2 18. Item 46 (Rich Schroeppel):
The most probable suit distribution in bridge hands is 4-4-3-2, as compared
to 4-3-3-3, which is the most evenly distributed. This is because the world
likes to have unequal numbers: a thermodynamic effect saying things will not
be in the state of lowest energy, but in the state of lowest disordered
energy. Item 81 (Rich Schroeppel): Count the magic squares of order 5 (that
is, all the 5-by-5 arrangements of the numbers from 1 to 25 such that all
rows, columns, and diagonals add up to the same number). There are about 320
million, not counting those that differ only by rotation and reflection.
Item 154 (Bill Gosper): The myth that any given programming language is
machine independent is easily exploded by computing the sum of powers of 2.
If the result loops with period = 1 with sign + , you are on a
sign-magnitude machine. If the result loops with period = 1 at -1 , you are
on a twos-complement machine. If the result loops with period greater than
1, including the beginning, you are on a ones-complement machine. If the
result loops with period greater than 1, not including the beginning, your
machine isn't binary the pattern should tell you the base. If you run out of
memory, you are on a string or bignum system. If arithmetic overflow is a
fatal error, some fascist pig with a read-only mind is trying to enforce
machine independence. But the very ability to trap overflow is machine
dependent. By this strategy, consider the universe, or, more precisely,
algebra: Let X = the sum of many powers of 2 =. ..111111 (base 2). Now add X
to itself: X + X =. ..111110. Thus, 2X = X - 1 , so X = -1. Therefore
algebra is run on a machine (the universe) that is two's-complement. Item
174 (Bill Gosper and Stuart Nelson): 21963283741 is the only number such
that if you represent it on the PDP-10 as both an integer and a
floating-point number, the bit patterns of the two representations are
identical. Item 176 (Gosper): The banana phenomenon was encountered when
processing a character string by taking the last 3 letters typed out,
searching for a random occurrence of that sequence in the text, taking the
letter following that occurrence, typing it out, and iterating. This ensures
that every 4-letter string output occurs in the original. The program typed
BANANANANANANANA.... We note an ambiguity in the phrase, the N th occurrence
of. In one sense, there are five 00's in 0000000000; in another, there are
nine. The editing program TECO finds five. Thus it finds only the first ANA
in BANANA, and is thus obligated to type N next. By Murphy's Law, there is
but one NAN, thus forcing A, and thus a loop. An option to find overlapped
instances would be useful, although it would require backing up N 1
characters before seeking the next N -character string. Note: This last item
refers to a Dissociated Press implementation. See also banana problem.
HAKMEM also contains some rather more complicated mathematical and technical
items, but these examples show some of its fun flavor. An HTML transcription
of the entire document is available at
http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/hbaker/hakmem/hakmem.html.