2: Real-world algorithm examples

Section 1: Introduction / 2: Real-world algorithm examples

Algorithms aren't confined to textbooks; they are the invisible engines driving countless technologies we interact with daily. Understanding their real-world applications grounds abstract concepts and highlights their critical role in solving practical problems efficiently.

• GPS navigation systems like Google Maps use sophisticated shortest-path algorithms (like Dijkstra's algorithm or A* search). These algorithms process the road network (represented as a graph with nodes and weighted edges for distances/travel times), systematically exploring paths to find the optimal route within milliseconds.
• Web search engines rely on algorithms like PageRank to rank billions of web pages. This link analysis algorithm analyzes web structure, deeming pages with high-quality links from important pages as more authoritative. The process involves complex matrix operations and iterative graph computations.
• Online shopping platforms utilize recommendation algorithms powered by collaborative filtering. By comparing purchase/viewing histories across similar users and calculating similarities (e.g., cosine similarity), these algorithms predict preferred items using data mining techniques.
• Social media feeds employ sorting and ranking algorithms to order content by predicted relevance. Scores are assigned based on user interactions, post recency, content type, and relationships. Complex sorting algorithms process massive data volumes in real-time for personalized feeds.
• Digital security depends on cryptographic algorithms like RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman). RSA leverages the computational difficulty of factoring large prime numbers to encrypt data in protocols like HTTPS, ensuring secure transmission of sensitive information.