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Flowchart of using successive subtractions to find the greatest common divisor of number r and s. In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm (/ ˈ æ l ɡ ə r ɪ ð əm / ⓘ) is a finite sequence of mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. [1]
An algorithm is fundamentally a set of rules or defined procedures that is typically designed and used to solve a specific problem or a broad set of problems.. Broadly, algorithms define process(es), sets of rules, or methodologies that are to be followed in calculations, data processing, data mining, pattern recognition, automated reasoning or other problem-solving operations.
The algorithm continues until a removed node (thus the node with the lowest f value out of all fringe nodes) is a goal node. [b] The f value of that goal is then also the cost of the shortest path, since h at the goal is zero in an admissible heuristic. The algorithm described so far only gives the length of the shortest path.
Specific applications of search algorithms include: Problems in combinatorial optimization, such as: . The vehicle routing problem, a form of shortest path problem; The knapsack problem: Given a set of items, each with a weight and a value, determine the number of each item to include in a collection so that the total weight is less than or equal to a given limit and the total value is as ...
Starting from the initial state (0, 0), it is possible to use any graph search algorithm (e.g. BFS) to search the state (N, T). If the state is found, then by backtracking we can find a subset with a sum of exactly T. The run-time of this algorithm is at most linear in the number of states.
Illustration of Dijkstra's algorithm finding a path from a start node (lower left, red) to a target node (upper right, green) in a robot motion planning problem. Open nodes represent the "tentative" set (aka set of "unvisited" nodes). Filled nodes are the visited ones, with color representing the distance: the redder, the closer (to the start ...
Sorting a set of unlabelled weights by weight using only a balance scale requires a comparison sort algorithm. A comparison sort is a type of sorting algorithm that only reads the list elements through a single abstract comparison operation (often a "less than or equal to" operator or a three-way comparison) that determines which of two elements should occur first in the final sorted list.
Shuffling can also be implemented by a sorting algorithm, namely by a random sort: assigning a random number to each element of the list and then sorting based on the random numbers. This is generally not done in practice, however, and there is a well-known simple and efficient algorithm for shuffling: the Fisher–Yates shuffle .