Algorithm

Quick meaning: Algorithm is a noun meaning (loosely) A flowchart illustrating a decision-making process for human users, especially health care professionals.

Meaning

(loosely) A flowchart illustrating a decision-making process for human users, especially health care professionals.

More Meanings

1. (uncountable, obsolete) Calculation with Arabic numerals; algorism.
2. (social media, metonymic) recommender systems and the curation of feeds
3. (countable) A collection of ordered steps that solve a mathematical problem. A precise step-by-step plan for a computational procedure that possibly begins with an input value and yields an output value in a finite number of steps.

Example Sentences

It’s a computer – an algorithm – and if you’ve been in Iran lately, they take you out of the system.

Mark Zuckerberg: No, I need the algorithm you used to rank chess players. / Eduardo Saverin: Are you OK? / Mark Zuckerberg: We're ranking girls.

The use of algorithms in policing is one example of their increasing influence on our lives. And, as their ubiquity spreads, so too does the debate around whether we should allow ourselves to become so reliant on them – and who, if anyone, is policing their use.

Informally, an algorithm is any well-defined computational procedure that takes some value, or set of values, as input and produces some value, or set of values, as output. An algorithm is thus a sequence of computational steps that transform the input into the output.

Word Forms

• algorithms
• algorism

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include calculus, arithmetic, significance, identifiers, method, routine.

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