Algorithm

An “algorithm” is simply a set of instructions that is to be followed in order. The word came from the Persian mathematician al-Khwārizmī, author of ninth-century book of techniques for doing mathematics by hand. Khwārizmī’s book “al-Jabr wa’l-Muqābala” where the word “al-Jabr” provided the source of our word “algebra.”

However, the earliest known algorithms predate the work of al-Khwārizmī. A four-thousand-year-old Sumerian clay tablet found near Baghdad describes a scheme for long division written in cuneiform script¹.

“But algorithm are not confined to mathematics alone. When you cook bread from a recipe, you’re following an algorithm. When you knit a sweater from a pattern, you’re following an algorithm. When you put a sharp edge on a piece of flint by executing a precise sequence of strikes with the end of an antler–a key step in making fine stone tools–you’re following an algorithm. Algorithms have been a part of human technology ever since the Stone Age,” wrote Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths².