Drawing Algorithms
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An algorithm, drawn by a 43-year-old male IT worker in Switzerland.

Could you help draw how an algorithm works? How it works? Yes. And this time you may also describe what you are drawing okay, good. Um... So the point is that you have a [Silence]. I take it there's a problem. Hmm [affirmative] And I want to solve this problem somehow and there in this problem there is just an input in this sense, so an input, no matter what. So what - input and I expect any output. And now an algorithm how it works is simple, a string of instructions. which must be executed in order to go from input to output Okay And how does that work? You simply have to build in step by step, certain instructions - for me these are instructions to abstract them, they are simply linked to each other somehow and can be looped in and go back to a previous state and then... two, three, four. Then you get to the output depending on that, so if the problem is in that case, if it's a problem, that it has a solution Okay, done? Yeah Great, then: In what context did you learn about algorithms? Um, in the context... with mathematics for sure. School, right? Yes, in school surely first of all, in primary school the biggest common factor or something like that, these basic things. Afterwards then at university just like that algorithms and data structures What did you study at the university? Business Informatics, i.e. computer science and economics and you were talking specifically about algorithms... Of course the lecture was called Algorithms and Data Structures [laughs] and it was about describing essential problems of computer science or basic things algorithmically so that you can abstract that and then map it back to your computer system. Okay and so in your everyday life, do you have contact with algorithms? Currently now? So recently? Hmm, with algorithms... Yeah, sure, so I do a lot of machine learning besides data science and that's where I come into contact with algorithms. Which you also program yourself? Yes, of course I program myself and then of course also in connection with regression algorithms, for example Okay, yes, and in other contexts? Away from work? Well, I hear from time to time while I'm cooking, it's also a kind of algorithm, then I read up on recipes and then, maybe I do it - still funny what an algorithm for making the best cake, you hear it on the internet every day or you read it. Yes Otherwise, here I have defined processes in IT, this is also a kind of algorithm for me, this is simply an abstraction of the steps you have to follow, for example to get from a problem to a solution or to somehow transform an input into a specific output. Okay, yeah great. Thanks