the.com/algorithm
a recipe that doesn't care if you understand it, only that you follow it
means a precise step-by-step procedure for solving a problem or completing a task, especially one a computer can follow.
from A fossil of a name. The 9th-century Persian mathematician al-Khwārizmī wrote a foundational book on calculation; his name, Latinized, drifted into 'algorismus,' originally meaning the art of arithmetic with Hindu-Arabic numerals. Over centuries it shifted spelling and meaning, nudged toward 'arithmos' (Greek for 'number'), until 'algorithm' came to mean any systematic computational procedure.
- name origin
- From al-Khwarizmi, a 9th-century Persian mathematician
- older than computers
- Babylonians used them on clay tablets
- feeds your feed
- Decides what billions see before they wake up
- euclid's gift
- His 2300-year-old method still runs in code today
- finite by law
- Must stop; an endless one is just a bug
pagerank — google's 1998 web ranking algorithm that revolutionized search by counting hyperlinks as votes
transformer — 2017 neural network architecture that powers gpt, bert, and modern large language models
quicksort — 1961 sorting algorithm by c.a.r. hoare with o(n log n) average time complexity, widely used in practice
dijkstra's shortest path — 1956 graph algorithm by edsger dijkstra that finds shortest routes, used in gps and networking