On 30/09/2011 9:08 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>> The first "computer" was arguably the design by Babbage, and the first
>>> "algorithm" was allegedly written by Ada Lovelace, who died almost
>>> exactly 1 century before Turing.
>>
>> I would argue that algorithms go further back than that.
>
> At this point, it becomes necessary to define what you mean by "algorithm".
>
> Is long division an "algorithm"? Because the ancient Babylonians
> apparently had that waaay back in 3100 BC. That's some FIVE MILLENNIA ago.
>

I would define an algorithm the same way the Wiki does.
An algorithm is an effective method expressed as a finite list of 
well-defined instructions for calculating a function.
So I would say that the steps for doing long division are an algorithm.

> What I actually /said/ was that computers (by which I mean fully
> autonomous computational devices)

What do you mean by "fully autonomous computational devices"?

had O(log N) lookup way later than

I am not familiar with the Big O notation so I misread your sentence. As 
usual I tried to make some sort of sense out of what could have been 
typos and or bad grammar and spelling.
So in English, if possible, what do you mean?

> books (by which I mean large textual documents stored as visible marks
> on some sort of medium) had it.

That is just juvenile and pompous. Only funny to a teenager.

> Given how ancient writing is and how
> comparatively new functioning computers are, I think that's a safe
> assertion.


using ones and zeros.
I have worked on computers that were solely pneumatic. They could add, 
subtract multiply and divide. Standard components could extract square 
roots integrate and average.


-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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