Science Forums 2

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by SidewalkCynic

I recently learned that algorithm is a word being used without a definite defintion, as seems to be the case of a lot of terms I have been analyzing.

I think the meaning of “algorithm” is well defined and understood The definition give in your wikipedia link

In mathematics, computing, linguistics, and related subjects, an algorithm is a finite sequence of instructions, an explicit, step-by-step procedure for solving a problem, often used for calculation and data processing.

strikes me as a good, conventional, uncontroversial one.

Originally Posted by SidewalkCynic

Anyway, I am wondering about this passage that algorithms and it seemingly exercised in fields beyond computer programming.

The term “algorithm” is commonly used to describe any step-by-step list of instructions for doing something. So long as the entity reading and executing the instructions does so correctly, an algorithms is useful, so any entity from an electronic computer to a human short-order chef can use them. The term algorithm has been in use for more-or-less a thousand years, mostly among mathematicians – as the wikipedia article expains, like the term “algebra”, the word is a westernization of a Arabic word. When used in other disciplines, other words are used to describe the same concept – for example, in cooking, “recipe”.

The idea of an algorithm is very old, arguably nearly prehistoric. Some even argue that algorithms – recorded or orally handed-down list of instructions for doing useful task or meaningless rituals – are key to the emergence of humankind from its pre-human ancestory. An interesting fictional lecture on the subject can be had in the 1992 novel “Snow Crash” – something of a classic among computer-ish folk, and highly recommended by me – in which author Neal Stephenson equates instructions for such mundane tasks as baking bread with what early humans considered magic spells, called in the Novel “me”, a word borrowed from Sumerian mythology.

Originally Posted by SidewalkCynic

There is no reference, anybody able to direct me toward any?

Beyond the various discussions and links in the wikipedia article, I’m unsure what sort of reference to an algorithm-related idea you’re looking for, SidewalkCynic. I’ve a hunch you’re interested in the idea algorithm-like processes that are not algorithms. A concept that come to mind is the computational oracle, used in formal computing theory to allow for solving problems that provably cannot be computed.

Let us know if any of this is what you’re looking for, or if I’m misreading what you’re looking for.

Originally Posted by SidewalkCynic

Okay - 52 views and no replies.

Keep in mind that many viewers are unregistered guest users who can’t and don’t want to reply to threads, only read them, that hypography is a small, friendly, sometimes slow-paced forum, where sometimes days can pass while people think about how to reply to a post before doing so.

Also, this thread doesn’t belong in the Engineering and Applied Science forum, as it’s about a generally mathematical concept, not physically building things, so may have been overlooked by people interested in its subject. I’ve moved the thread to Computer Science – if it proves to fit some other forum better, I or another moderator will move it there later.