Don’t be scared if you don’t know what an algorithm is. This article is for you, so please read on.
If you know what an algorithm is but mainly from a mathematical viewpoint, you may skip the following paragraph, but please read on below, too.
About algorithms… and human action
Picture ‘Lamp Flowchart’ by Wapcaplet, via Wikimedia Commons
In a nutshell, an algorithms is the standardized function by which an action is executed – the important word being “standardized“. Because: the action to be executed is defined very clearly, and the function must state unambiguously in what circumstances and under what conditions this action has to be executed (or not).
This may sound very theoretical, but we all have already been confronted with a multitude of algorithmic processes.
Retrieving money from a cash machine is a typical, rather simple example: the machine has a certain number of predefined “actions” it can do (ask for your PIN code, hand out a certain amount of money, show account balance, swallow your card etc.) and its actions depend on your input, which are “conditions” for the machine.
Of course every action that is computer-based is algorithmic, i.e. implemented within different “layers” of programming, all boiled down to the basic electronic signals 0 and 1.
But no need for computers: actually, every procedure guided by a flowchart is algorithmic, too. Everything that is standardized. Everything that is automated.
“Algorithm” means no room for interpretation. And no choice. Continue reading