[Starwolf]

For Christmas after she was accepted in the Comp Sci program my daugher got the Knuth Vol 1-3 in hardback from me. She did not understand why until later. Unfortunately I can not get Vol 4 in the same look.

[Myrddin]

I'm similarly disappointed in not have a hardback Vol 4 that matches Vol 1-3. Still, the combinatorial topic is very relevant to my original field of molecular biology and genetics. Doing factorial calculations with a simple add, subtract,multiply,divide calculator was no fun. My graduation gift was an HP25. In a matter of days, I had cobbled up programs on the HP25 to replace most of the tables in the Schaum's Genetics book. In my freshman physics class, I was calculating square roots with an approximation method while my classmates pushed a button on their HP35 calculators. I kept a slide rule with me to get the first approximation on the calculator :-(