Can you explain what an algorithm is like I was a 5 year old?

Photo by Magda Ehlers

Okay kiddo, imagine you have a bunch of toys on the floor, and your mom wants you to pick them up and put them in a box.

Now, you could just pick up any toy you see and put it in the box, but that might take a long time and you might forget which toys you’ve already picked up.

So instead, you can come up with a plan to pick up the toys in a certain order.

Maybe you’ll start with the biggest toys first, then move on to the medium-sized toys, and then finally pick up the smallest ones.

That’s kind of like an algorithm!

An algorithm is just a set of instructions that tells you how to do something step by step.

In this case, the algorithm is telling you how to pick up the toys in a certain order.

Algorithms are used all the time in computers to help them do things like sort data or solve math problems.

Just like how you have to follow the steps of your toy-picking algorithm to make sure you get all the toys in the box, computers have to follow the steps of their algorithms to get their work done.

Ivan Jimenez

Ivan is a professional digital marketer and advertiser.

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