a general description of a task that can (or cannot) be solved with an algorithm
What is a problem?
Doing some steps over and over.
What is iteration?
a search algorithm that starts at the middle of a sorted set of numbers and removes half of the data.
What is Binary Search?
a problem for which no algorithm can be constructed that is always capable of providing a correct yes-or-no answer.
What is an undecidable Problem?
programs are run by multiple devices.
What is Distributed Computing?
Putting steps in an order
What is sequencing?
Deciding which steps to do next.
What is selection?
Algorithms with a polynomial efficiency or lower (constant, linear, square, cube, etc.) are said to run in a reasonable amount of time.
What is Reasonable Time?
programs run in order, one command at a time.
What is Sequential?
both curve up.
What are polynomial and exponential?
a finite set of instructions that accomplish a task.
What is an algorithm?
a search algorithm which checks each element of a list, in order, until the desired value is found or all elements in the list have been checked.
What is a Linear Search?
For every new place to visit, the number of options for possible paths increases factorialy.
What is the Traveling Salesman Problem?
programs are broken into small pieces, some of which are run simultaneously.
What is Parallel Computing?
it grows at a much slower rate and is faster than Linear search, BUT the data must be sorted.
What is a binary search?
a measure of how many steps are needed to complete an algorithm.
What is Efficiency?
What is a sample heuristic?
Provide a "good enough" solution to a problem when an actual solution is impractical or impossible.
What is heuristics?
Sequential time divided by parallel time.
What is Speedup?
As we add more inputs, the number of steps grows at the same rate.
What is linear?
is bad but exponential gets unreasonably large extremely quickly.
What is a Polynomial?
Algorithms with exponential or factorial efficiencies are examples of algorithms that run in an unreasonable amount of time.
What is Unreasonable Time?
is an optimization problem, it is unreasonable and we need to use a heuristic to come up with a solution.
What is a traveling salesmen problem?
There are some problems we’ve proven that no computer will ever be able to solve. The Halting Problem is a very famous example of this.
What is undecidable?
Any algorithm whose efficiency includes an 2n, 3n, 4n …
What is exponential?