How to start learning about algorithms

After writing yesterday’s post, I was thinking about how much students should know about algorithms if they are to have a basic understanding of how AI works. Is it enough to tell them an algorithm is a set of instructions?

So I turned, as I often do, to Khan Academy — a free online learning site that often helps me through my lack of a mathematics background. I found a set of three short lessons, starting with a video.

Screenshot from Khan Academy video

In the introductory video, “What is an algorithm and why should you care?”, we see various practical uses of algorithms, followed by the statement above, and a brief description of how route finding works — what Google Maps does when it gives you directions. Route finding is often used as an example of accepting a “good enough” output for the sake of speed (that is, efficiency).

Watching the animation, we comprehend that the computer is following a set of instructions to determine a good route for a delivery truck with 25 stops to make. We see the process of the algorithm at work, rather than seeing formulas and equations.

I love that the video also shows us, with animation, how the efficiency of an algorithm is calculated.

The second lesson, “A guessing game,” demonstrates binary search (an algorithm) by allowing you to discover it interactively. Wonderful!

The third lesson, “Route-finding,” is much more reading intensive. It explains the algorithm in terms of solving a maze. Without knowing the exact path to solve the maze, the algorithm can “know” which choice for its next step takes it closer to the goal (the center of the maze). I don’t consider this lesson very helpful, but that’s because I saw a much better explanation of maze-solving algorithms here:

Start video at 54:35 for demo of the greedy best-first search algorithm

I am continually amazed and humbled by the variety of ways in which people teach these concepts. More important, I realize how some ways of explaining a concept are not at all effective — for me, at least — and another way of explaining makes it clear as crystal.

So, how much should students know about algorithms, if they are to have a general understanding of AI? I think a good start would be to watch and discuss the introductory Khan Academy video, and also to see a further visual (probably animated) representation of another kind of algorithm at work.

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