CRYPTOGRAPHY
The original, readable message that Alice wants to send to Bob.
plaintext
Numerical methods give this kind of answer: close to the true one, but not exact.
approximate
The quantity that is to be maximized or minimized.
objective function
An algorithm must be this, because one that never ends is useless.
finite
A person who secretly listens to a private conversation (Eve).
eavesdropper
In Newton's method, one repeat of the steps is called this.
iteration
A restriction on the values that the variables can take.
constraint
The Babylonians recorded early algorithms on these, in cuneiform.
clay tablets
Encrypted or encoded information because it contains a form of the original plaintext that is unreadable by a human or computer without the proper cipher to decrypt it
Ciphertext
A value at which a function equals zero.
root
A set is this if a line joining any two points in the set stays inside the set.
convex
English-like syntax that resembles a programming language.
pseudocode
Codes use this to replace words or phrases with random strings of characters.
codebook
In x(n+1) = x(n) − f(x(n)) / ___, the missing part is this.
f prime of x(n) (the derivative)?
When finding the global optimum is not practical, we settle for this.
a local optimum
She produced the very first "computer program" in the 1840s.
Ada Lovelace
Asymmetric algorithms use this kind of pair, and one of the two can be public.
a public/private key pair?
Monte Carlo simulation relies on this to estimate functions and statistics.
random sampling
This method is still the standard computer method for solving linear programming problems.
simplex method
He notably invented binary algebra, the basis for modern computer code.
George Boole