I have long had a theory about the Beatles and Bob Dylan. I know their songs intimately, every note, every cough, every crackle. My theory is, I know the recordings better than they do. Paul McCartney has played Yesterday thousands of times, no two of them identical. What chance has he got against me with the thousands of times I’ve heard the 1965 version?

Today I had the chance to be McCartney. I had a fine afternoon working with my new student Abi Gopal, who seems to have read all my works and knows them backwards. Toward the end of the day I proposed that we try a certain trick adapted from my AAA approximation paper of a couple of years ago. He agreed that this was a good idea, and then gently showed me that I hadn’t remembered the algorithm right.

[10 March 2018]