Algorithm
The word 'algorithm' has its roots in Latinizing the name of Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi in a first step to "algorismus". Al-Khwārizmī (, , c. 780–850) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, geographer, and scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, whose name means 'the native of Khwarezm', a region that was part of Greater Iran and is now in Uzbekistan.
Algorithm characterizations
"Goodness" of an algorithm, "best" algorithms: Knuth states that "In practice, we not only want algorithms, we want "good" algorithms..." He suggests that some criteria of an algorithm's goodness are the number of steps to perform the algorithm, its "adaptability to computers, its simplicity and elegance, etc." Given a number of algorithms to perform the same computation, which one is "best"? He calls this sort of inquiry "algorithmic analysis: given an algorithm, to determine its performance characteristcis" (all quotes this paragraph: Knuth Vol. 1 p. 7)