An algorithm is a specific set of instructions for carrying out a procedure or solving a problem, usually with the requirement that the procedure terminate at some point. Specific algorithms sometimes also go by the name method , procedure , or technique . The word "algorithm" is a distortion of al-Khwārizmī, a Persian mathematician who wrote an influential treatise about algebraic methods. The process of applying an algorithm to an input to obtain an output is called a computation .
See also Computation Explore this topic in the MathWorld classroom Explore with Wolfram|Alpha References Aho, A. V.; Hopcroft, J. E.; and Ullman, J. D. The Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1974. Atallah, M. J. Algorithms and Theory of Computation Handbook. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1998. Baase, S. and van Gelder, A. Computer Algorithms: Introduction to Design and Analysis, 3rd ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2000. Bellman, R. E.; Cooke, K. L.; and Lockett, J. A. Algorithms, Graphs, and Computers. New York: Academic Press, 1970. Black, P. E. "Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures." http://www.nist.gov/dads/ . Brassard, G. and Bratley, P. Fundamentals of Algorithmics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1995. Chabert, J.-L. (Ed.). A History of Algorithms: From the Pebble to the Microchip. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1999. Collberg, C. "A goVista." http://www.algovista.com/ . Cormen, T. H.; Leiserson, C. E.; and Rivest, R. L. Introduction to Algorithms. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990. Greene, D. H. and Knuth, D. E. Mathematics for the Analysis of Algorithms, 3rd ed. Boston, MA: Birkhäuser, 1990. Harel, D. Algorithmics: The Spirit of Computing, 2nd ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1992. Knuth, D. E. The Art of Computer Programming, Vol. 1: Fundamental Algorithms, 3rd ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997. Knuth, D. E. The Art of Computer Programming, Vol. 2: Seminumerical Algorithms, 3rd ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1998. Knuth, D. E. The Art of Computer Programming, Vol. 3: Sorting and Searching, 2nd ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1998. Kozen, D. C. Design and Analysis and Algorithms. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1991. Nijenhuis, A. and Wilf, H. Combinatorial Algorithms for Computers and Calculators, 2nd ed. New York: Academic Press, 1978. Sedgewick, R. Algorithms in C, 3rd ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1998. Sedgewick, R. and Flajolet, P. An Introduction to the Analysis of Algorithms. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1996. Skiena, S. S. The Algorithm Design Manual. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1997. Skiena, S. Implementing Discrete Mathematics: Combinatorics and Graph Theory with Mathematica. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1990. Skiena, S. S. "The Stony Brook Algorithm Repository." http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~algorith/ . Wilf, H. Algorithms and Complexity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1986. http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~wilf/AlgComp2.html . Wolfram, S. A New Kind of Science. Champaign, IL: Wolfram Media, 2002. Referenced on Wolfram|Alpha Algorithm Cite this as: Weisstein, Eric W. "Algorithm." From MathWorld --A Wolfram Web Resource. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Algorithm.html
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