abacus
An ancient device for performing arithmetic calculations by sliding beads along rods or in grooves. Despite the spread of electronic calculators and computers, the abacus is still widely used in the ...
Alan Turing
(1912–1954)British mathematician, who introduced the concept of the Turing machine.Born in London, he was educated at King's College, Cambridge, where he was elected to a fellowship in 1936. In the ...
artificial intelligence
The theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between ...
artificial life
While processes of selforganization, reproduction, learning, adaptation and evolution are in nature confined to the biological sphere, they can be duplicated in principle in computer simulations, ...
back-propagation algorithm
In parallel distributed processing, a method of adjusting the output of a multi-layered neural network to produce a desired state for a given input, by first checking the input and computing the ...
block cipher
An algorithm used in symmetric key encryption which transforms a block of data each time the algorithm is applied. One of the most best-known block cipher algorithms is the Data Encryption Standard ...
bubble sort
A form of sorting by exchanging that simply interchanges pairs of elements that are out of order in a sequence of passes through the file, until no such pairs exist. The method is not competitive ...
calculate
To work out the value of a mathematical or arithmetical procedure, or the output of an algorithm.
calculus
A calculus is a formal language and rules for manipulating expressions of the language. For example, by applying algorithms to arabic numerals one can determine the values of arithmetical functions. ...
Church's thesis
The hypothesis, put forward by Alonzo Church in 1935, that any function on the natural numbers that can be computed by an algorithm can be defined by a formula of the lambda calculus. See also ...
cipher
A secret or disguised way of writing; a code. The term comes (in late Middle English, in the senses ‘symbol for zero’ and ‘arabic numeral’) from Old French, based on Arabic ṣifr ‘zero’.
clock drift
Computers usually contain crystal-based clocks. These clocks are often subject to clock drift, when their time becomes gradually more and more inaccurate. This provides problems for the designers of ...
complexity
A measure of the computer time or space required to solve a problem by means of an algorithm of interest, expressed as a function of the dimensions of the problem. If a problem with n dimensions can ...
computable function
A functionf : X → Yfor which there exists an algorithm for evaluating f(x) for any element x in the domain X of f.
creativity
The production of ideas and objects that are both novel or original and worthwhile or appropriate, that is, useful, attractive, meaningful, or correct. According to some researchers, in order to ...
cryptographic checksum
A numeric quantity formed by applying an algorithm to a message that is to be sent through a network. It is used to check that no modification of the message has taken place. The process for using a ...
decision problem
A computational task that for each possible input requires “true” or “false” to be output, depending on whether the input possesses a certain property. An algorithm that produces the correct decision ...
discrete mathematics
A branch of mathematics dealing with finite sets and calculations (rather than infinite processes such as taking limits and convergence or differentiation of continuous functions). Its boundaries are ...
effective procedure
A procedure that results in a solution to a problem in a finite number of steps. Another term for an algorithm.
EM algorithm
An algorithm for computing maximum likelihood estimates of parameters when some of the data are missing. It is an iterative algorithm that alternates two steps until convergence is attained to ...
