Algorithms
If you need to get things in order, this algorithm might be the fastest way to do it based on its name alone. It divides and conquers around a pivot element to get the job done.
What is quicksort?
The book A Walk in the Woods is about the author Bill Bryson's experiences on this famous hiking trail that stretches for more than 2,000 miles down the Eastern United States.
What is the Appalachian Trail?
No, it's not Computer-Aided Design software but it does happen to use the same acronym for its currency code.
What is the Canadian dollar?
This movie takes over 3 hours to illustrate the dangers of sailing through the North Atlantic Ocean without enough safety equipment. There was a necklace in there somewhere too.
What is Titanic?
Worf is the face of this warrior species from Star Trek that primarily uses overly complex blades.
What are klingons?
Due to updated definitions by the United Nations, this Indonesian city is now considered the most populated in the world.
What is Jakarta?
This algorithm uses a queue to visit all the nodes of a graph one level at a time. It also tracks nodes it' has already seen to detect if there's a cycle.
What is Breadth-First Search?
The tallest mountain in North America has two names. One is the name given to it by the indigenous Koyukon people and it shares the other with the 25th president of the United States.
What is Denali or Mount McKinley?
This currency is the oldest in continuous use and is known by other terms like "quid" and "Ps" in British slang.
What is the British pound or pound sterling?
The first movie of this franchise is nearly three hours long and has such a lazy plot the MacGuffin is literally called "unobtanium."
What is Avatar?
These stars of the Alien franchise have corrosive blood, sharp claws, and a bladed tail.
What are xenomorphs?
Formerly known as Bombay, this city was renamed in 1995 to adhere more closely to Marathi language conventions.
What is Mumbai?
Despite its name, this technique is pretty boring and involves breaking complex problems into smaller, overlapping subproblems. Caching is used to avoid repeat calculations.
What is dynamic programming?
This geyser was named based on its highly predictable time to erupt. It's not much but back in 1870, it was the only entertainment they had.
What is Old Faithful?
Its name may lead you to believe it's the currency of France but it's actually used by a far more neutral European nation.
What is the Swiss franc?
This film almost made physics look worthwhile and stood in stark contrast to its box office competitor, Barbie, which was released at the same time.
What is Oppenheimer?
As one of the three playable factions in the Starcraft franchise, this advanced civilization is held back only by their need for more pylons.
What are the protoss?
Is it a city or is it a state? This Asian republic is a bit of both but two things are for certain: you'll have to enlist in the military if you're a male citizen and chewing gum is illegal.
What is Singapore?
This algorithm was named after the Dutch computer scientist who conceived it and is a way to find the shortest path between nodes in a weighted graph.
What is Djikstra's algorithm?
As the world's largest coral reef system, it's a point of major concern for environmentalists that it is undergoing significant coral bleaching due to climate change.
What is the Great Barrier Reef?
The currency of Mexico is also the name of A$AP Rocky's debut single and the first name of the featured artist on the 2023 hit "Ella Baila Sola."
What is the peso?
What is King Kong?
These hateful aliens are major enemies to Doctor Who and to hide their resemblance to slimy octopus es with brains, they're mostly seen in their mobile support systems that look like fancy trash cans.
What are daleks?
This city was renamed to Leningrad in 1924 and then reverted back to its original name after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
What is St. Petersburg?
Rather than coming up with a cool name for this linear-time string matching algorithm, its three developers just named it after themselves.
What is the Knuth-Morris-Pratt (KMP) algorithm?
Located in Venezuela, this landmark is the world's tallest uninterrupted waterfall and inspired the key plot location Paradise Falls in Pixar's Up.
What is Angel Falls?
This German currency was retired by the euro in 2002 but went through the ringer, including experiencing hyperinflation after World War I as Germany printed vast amounts to pay reparations to France and Belgium.
What is the German mark?
This movie about rowing boats and racing horses somehow won 11 Academy Awards in 1960.
What is Ben-Hur?
Originally debuting in Return of the Jedi, this carnivorous creature looks like a giant clam with tentacles and takes 1,000 years to digest its prey.
What is a sarlacc?
Aside from being the largest city in Nigeria and the second-largest city in Africa, it's also known for its exciting tech industry which has earned it the nickname "Silicon Lagoon."
What is Lagos?
Computers in the 1990s weren't great and this algorithm was needed in Quake III just to make this seemingly simple calculation in a reasonable amount of time.
1/sqrt(x)
What is the fast inverse square root algorithm?
It might not be as tall or as famous as its Himalayan cousin but this mountain is significantly more difficult to summit, boasting a fatality rate nearly 10x higher than that of Everest.
What is K2?
The gold version of this Ancient Greek currency was referenced in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series several times despite the silver variant being far more common historically.
What is the drachma?
This 1962 film stars Peter O'Toole as the titular character and won seven Academy Awards. That's a lot for a movie about a guy in the desert.
What is Lawrence of Arabia?
This alien race is one of the most recognizable of the Mass Effect universe thanks to Liara's relationship to Commander Shepard.
What are the asari?
In the late 1980s, this "city" housed 35,000 residents in just 6.5 acres, resulting in a population density of 3 million inhabitants per square mile.
What is Kowloon Walled City?