Life with Algorithms
Algorithms can be intimidating. Like our life actually. If we consider our life as a big program, there are different algorithms that work together. The efficiency of each algorithms shapes our decisions, marks our fate. A wrong decision means your algorithm is lacking some aspects that other people’s algorithms have. Smartness can be considered as an algorithm with less number of steps. Quick decision making can mean an ‘efficient’ judgement with due diligence.
I have learnt algorithms in a way that would help me make a better informed decision. After all that is what the computer was made for, making your decisions for you. Now if there is even a small glitch in the algorithm, the decision can go wrong. And it can cost billions.
So from the above observations, I think it is safe to conclude that humans are a big computer with a life like program where we run different algorithms that shape our life.
It was interesting to note how different automated warehouses work on algorithms which do not collide at all. Like Amazon. I would love to know how they manage with random placement of goods in their warehouses. The Amazon warehouses that we saw in the video looked very much advanced with technology. Automation of the trolleys has made the work of the pickers much easier.
It was also interesting to see how the search, sort and shortest path algorithms work. It was an interactive class activity. I can now visualize how a control would flow through a program. It can be thought of a Relay race that goes through a certain path, evaluates and analyses the solution and gets back to the first position only to start again.
Use of algorithms in our daily life will not only make decision making easier but also can bring in discipline and order.
The long method of analysis we witnessed turned out to be very cumbersome and messy. The average run time for the algorithm for different sizes of data sets turned out to be different for every other algorithm.
The topics missed by me in the class 1 would be covered in the upcoming two weeks of charrettes.
The relation between amortized and asymptotic complexity makes it easy to approximate the efficiency and cost of the algorithm.
The topics Big O, Omega need some brushing from my side. It seems easy to design for a system now. If we have a context and a specified goal then making decisions would make work easier.
To be honest, the field trip we made to Whitefield is the sole reason why I have decided to never work in Bangalore. The traffic situation itself is nauseating and this has made us aware how necessary it is to find out a solution for this. Even though people of Bangalore say casually when they mention minimum of two hours of one-way travel for office. But they do not know if we can even cut their travel time by half, they would be working with full potential. If this goes on for a few more years, people would seriously take up alternative methods to earn money. If earning money itself is costing them so much.
This was one of the research trips where we found out the internal workings of a company and it has piqued my curiosity for more research on this topic. Given the fact that maybe in two year I would be in the same position working 10 hours a day after travelling for almost half my life to get to work, I would definitely look for a better solution.
All thanks to Calvin Jude Stanley because of whom we were able to get into the deeper information of the company. All the wonders that contacts can do. Also, Srushti who was able to get hold of people from other companies and drill out information.
The research opened gates for many other topics of interest. Like Google’s search engine, Amazon warehouse, Zomato and Swiggy delivery scenes and many more. As this topic will help us know more and improve on the experience that we are planning to provide, it will also help us understand the user.
During our group discussions I found myself using an example of AI to explain how the algorithm would work. This is going to help me understand various other technologies and design experiences for them.
