al⋅go⋅rithm [al-guh-rith-uhm]

–noun
a set of rules for solving a problem in a finite number of steps, as for finding the greatest common divisor.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.

One of the greatest things I’ve found about the work I do is that concepts from one field often tend to automatically map over to work I do in other contexts. When I first learned about Object Orientated Programming, I started to see the world in terms of objects. I’d look at the TV and think “hmm, the TV has XY and Z properties and these methods exist for doing those things and if event q happens, method k gets fired”.

These things tend to mellow out after a short period of time but it’s hard to learn anything without it becoming part of what you do and how you operate. The more things you learn the more choices you have about what behaviours you exhibit and this leads me to the idea of Algorithmic Thinking.

As programmers, we all know about algorithms and their importance in software engineering but what about in the rest of the world. Since the idea of algorithms isn’t one from programming but one from mathematics, and mathematics being the way in which we model the world around us, it makes sense for us to take our knowledge of algorithms and to begin thinking about other things in a similar way.

One of the great things I love about algorithms is that they’re implementation neutral. That is, the algorithm defines the finite series of steps to follow to get result x but it doesn’t tell you how you should implement those steps. That’s part of being creative and artistic and the more of each of those you are, the more exciting it becomes to figure out new ways of doing lots of different things.

Every now and then I spend a little bit of time thinking completely algorithmically so that I can more easily build up that part of my brain that deals with problem solving. If I have the cook dinner, what algorithm am I going to use? Maybe I’ll come up with three or four different ones and then pick that one that best suits what I want.

Then I get to implement that algorithm and figure out different ways I’m going to go about that. If step one is to get the ingredients out of ther cupboard how am I going to implement that behaviour? Will I simply walk up and get them out? Maybe I’ll climb up a small step ladder to reach? Perhaps I’m going to put some music on and dance my way over to the kitchen? The beauty in this part is that you get to be as creative as you can imagine.

I tend to think of things in terms of puzzles, whether it’s cooking a meal, writing a computer program or simply figuring out what’s going to come next in a movie. Part of my love for being on this planet is our ability as humans to solve puzzles and problems and to always be creating new ways of doing things.

I’m interested in what kinds of fun algorithms people can come up with for every day tasks. Whatcha got?