Algorithms 101: What is an Algorithm?

I am a true digital native, spending my entire working day on the Internet or using the web in some way or another. My personal life is extremely similar, whether I am emailing my friends and family, following the news on Twitter, even posting my latest culinary exploits on Instagram or asking Google endless questions regarding every aspect of my life.

Digital Native

noun

• a person born or brought up during the age of digital technology and so familiar with computers and the Internet from an early age:the digital tools that are reshaping our economy make more sense to young digital natives than to members of older generations

So, you would have thought I would understand exactly what an algorithm is and how exactly they work. Well, up until very recently I was just as baffled as you! During my search, yes starting with Google (of course!), I started to get a better understanding of what exactly an algorithm is and actually how all-encompassing and fundamental algorithms are in my life. 

So this post will convey, what I feel are the 3 key elements to help you understand the basics of algorithms.

1. Algorithms, the bottom line

While trying to get my head around these fundamental things called ‘Algorithms’, I was swamped by the mass of terminology and ‘gumff’ that came with it. In order to overcome this hurdle and get my, visually driven, brain around this concept I started to think of algorithms as a simple feedback look.

Well, an algorithm in its simplest form is a set of instructions aimed at solving a specific problem. Psudocode allows us common folk (non-computer programmers) to read these instructions.

2. Where Algorithms are found

When we initially think of algorithms, we think of computers (well I do). However this is not the only place that algorithms can be found, ‘we’, as humans, also function using a series of algorithms. This Ted-Ed video on algorithms helped me get my head around how human use algorithms, in a very nice illustration using the basic process of counting how many people are in a room.

A computer programme (if you can even begin to get your head around that) is a series of complex and interwoven algorithms. These algorithms are dealing with multiple different processes happening at any one given time, driving a variety of processes. 

Computer programmes are responsible for every ‘click’, every ‘scroll’ and every ‘mouse movement’ we do. Providing governance for all processes that are involved in presenting a perfectly seamless computer screen to the end user.

3. Algorithms vs. Human processes

An algorithm is a set of instructions aimed at solving a problem, via a step-by-step process. As previously discussed humans use algorithms to perform a whole host of different tasks. 

Like any journey or process, there are many different route to get from ‘A’ to ‘B’, some routes require you to go via ‘C’, or even pass ‘Go’ to collect £200.

Well, with this in mind it is no surprising that I am posing the question, ‘One day will there be algorithms to replace the processes we manually execute as humans in our everyday lives?’

Why would there not be? If anything algorithms are quicker, more accurate and don’t need to take a tea break. What more could you ask for in an employee?

So, I will be using this blog to answer some of the very key and poignant questions I have, specifically around how algorithms are going to shape the world of marketing as we know it today.

So, stay tuned for some more intellectually tantalising ‘Algo-Marketing’ topics as well as my attempt to answer some of the questions that puzzle me about how the world is evolving through the ever expanding and dominating digital and online universe.  

@Gemma_Clarkson