HAKMEM

Definitions

1. MIT AI Memo 239, a celebrated 1972 collection of assorted algorithms, number-theoretic curiosities, bit-manipulation tricks, and unsolved problems contributed by the MIT AI Lab community. Compiled largely by Michael Beeler, Bill Gosper, and Richard Schroeppel, its items range from elegant hacks for counting bits in a word to open questions in continued fractions and cellular automata. HAKMEM is prized less as a reference than as a portrait of a particular intellectual culture, one in which mathematics and machine-level cleverness were treated as a single subject. Many of its bit-twiddling items remain in working use.