Algorithms are everywhere. They play the stockmarket,
decide whether you can have a mortgage and may one day
drive your car for you. They search the internet when
commanded, stick carefully chosen advertisements into the
sites you visit and decide what prices to show you in online
shops. (…) But what exactly are algorithms, and what makes
them so powerful?
An algorithm is, essentially, a brainless way of doing
clever things. It is a set of precise steps that need no great
mental effort to follow but which, if obeyed exactly and
mechanically, will lead to some desirable outcome. Long
division and column addition are examples that everyone is
familiar with — if you follow the procedure, you are guaranteed
to get the right answer. So is the strategy, rediscovered
thousands of times every year by schoolchildren bored with
learning mathematical algorithms, for playing a perfect game
of noughts and crosses. The brainlessness is key: each step
should be as simple and as free from ambiguity as possible.
Cooking recipes and driving directions are algorithms of a sort.
But instructions like “stew the meat until tender” or “it’s a few
miles down the road” are too vague to follow without at least
some interpretation.
(…)
The Economist, August 30, 2017.
Segundo o texto, a execução de um algoritmo consiste em um processo que