9 Algorithms That Changed Our World (5A26)

Date: 13/11/2018

Good morning Principal Teachers and students:

Hi I am Andy from class 5A. Today I am going to share with you a book titled 9 Algorithms that changed our world by John Maccormick.

I know it’s a bit early. And some of you might still feel tired. so let’s start things off with some questions. What are algorithms? Why is it related to us? Algorithms are a sequence of rules and instructions that obey a set of logic. After hearing this definition, the tech kiddies would know how algorithms can be used. Programming. You can use algorithms to make programs. Or it is better to say algorithms give birth to programs. How? Here is an example. You’re going on a holiday at Hawaii and you are packing up your bags, but it would seem that you have miscalculated and now you have piles of clothes that just wouldn’t fit in. So what you do is to fold them, and then attempt to fit it. This is a typical example of data compression.

We compress something of a bigger size into a smaller representative of itself, that alone helps save space. The same thing goes with programming, we compress our world into a miniscule model and attempt to get answers from it. We can then find solutions by simulating with different variable factors.

Another thing about algorithms, is that it is a repeating set of instructions? Remember, I said something about sequences? Algorithms are sequences, so if you know about the sequence, you can do a whole lot more in solving problems. Take a deck of cards as an example. What is the possibility of drawing an ace of spades. I am sure some of you math kiddies already got the answer, but it is 1 to 52 for the non math kiddies.

Now here comes the tricky part, what happens if I give you a brand new deck. All you have to do is take out the 2 jokers from the bottom and you get an ace of spades. And your probability just shot up from a measly 1 to 52 to a whole 100 %. So what does this imply? To put it simply, if you know your game, winning it is a piece of cake.

So coding isn’t a hard skill. But you have to understand the logic behind it. Then you can use that logic to construct a world out of it.this book introduces different types of algorithms that is used on our daily lives. So in the end, if you know your algorithms, coding is as simple as tic tac toe.

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