Nice little speech, and his conclusion is much less inflammatory than your quote suggests (it would be strange if Knuth was really against mathematical theory).<p>Reading his examples, I feel as if time has been kind to mathematical theory. <i>n</i> has gotten a lot larger these days, and random access memory also simplifies some analyses. That&#x27;s not always true, and the gap he identifies is still real, but maybe it&#x27;s not always as important as it was.