What is an Algorithm?
An algorithm is a specific set of instructions for carrying out a procedure or solving a problem, usually with the requirement that the procedure terminates at some point. Specific algorithms sometimes also go by the name method, procedure, or technique. The word "algorithm" is a distortion of al-Khwārizmī, a Persian mathematician who wrote an influential treatise about algebraic methods. The process of applying an algorithm to an input to obtain an output is called a computation.
The algorithm is a technical term, and calling something an algorithm means that the following properties are all true:
- An algorithm is an unambiguous description that makes clear what has to be implemented. In a recipe, a step such as “Bake until done” is ambiguous because it doesn’t explain what “done” means. A more explicit description such as “Bake until the cheese begins to bubble” is better. In a computational algorithm, a step such as “Choose a large number” is vague: what is large? 1 million, 1 billion, or 100? Does the number have to be different each time, or can the same number be used on every run?
- An algorithm expects a defined set of inputs. For example, it might require two numbers where both numbers are greater than zero. Or it might require a word or a list of zero or more numbers.
- An algorithm produces a defined set of outputs. It might output the larger of the two numbers, an all-uppercase version of a word, or a sorted version of the list of numbers.
- An algorithm is guaranteed to terminate and produce a result, always stopping after a finite time. If an algorithm could potentially run forever, it wouldn’t be very useful because you might never get an answer.
- Most algorithms are guaranteed to produce the correct result. It’s rarely useful if an algorithm returns the largest number 99% of the time, but 1% of the time the algorithm fails and returns the smallest number instead.
- If an algorithm imposes a requirement on its inputs (called a precondition), that requirement must be met. For example, a precondition might be that an algorithm will only accept positive numbers as input. If preconditions aren’t met, then the algorithm is allowed to fail by producing the wrong answer or never terminating.
Algorithms are essential to the way computers process data. Many computer programs contain algorithms that detail the specific instructions a computer should perform (in a specific order) to carry out a specified task, such as calculating employees' paychecks or printing students' report cards. Thus, an algorithm can be considered to be any sequence of operations that can be simulated by a Turing-complete system. Typically, when an algorithm is associated with processing information, data are read from an input source, written to an output device, and/or stored for further processing. Stored data are regarded as part of the internal state of the entity performing the algorithm. In practice, the state is stored in one or more data structures. For some such computational processes, the algorithm must be rigorously defined: and specified in the way it applies in all possible circumstances that could arise. That is, any conditional steps must be systematically dealt with, case by case; the criteria for each case must be clear (and computable). Because an algorithm is a precise list of precise steps, the order of computation is always crucial to the functioning of the algorithm. Instructions are usually assumed to be listed explicitly, and are described as starting "from the top" and going "down to the bottom", an idea that is described more formally by the flow of control. So far, this discussion of the formalization of an algorithm has assumed the premises of imperative programming. This is the most common conception, and it attempts to describe a task in discrete, "mechanical" means. Unique to this conception of formalized algorithms is the assignment operation, setting the value of a variable. It derives from the intuition of "memory" as a scratchpad.