Interesting Examples of algorithms in everyday life

            Ever found shortest path from Place A to Place B on Google Maps? Ever rolled a dice just by a click in an online game? Ever used search functionality in a website? One thing which is common to all these scenarios is that one or other algorithm is being run and results are being delivered.

         Simply stated, Algorithm is a set of instructions to reach a result based on given inputs. To take a current world scenario, encryption has become almost a minimum requirement for any application. For example, a popular encryption technique is MD5 Encryption Algorithm.

Examples of MD5:

Input : HelloWorld
MD5 Hash : 68e109f0f40ca72a15e05cc22786f8e6

Input : GeeksForGeeks
MD5 Hash : f1e069787ece74531d112559945c6871

         Google when showing search results uses page ranking techniques. Facebook when showing news feed uses a similar ranking algorithm to make it more relevant to you. All these use a modification of Link Analysis, an interesting branch in Data Mining.
Let’s consider a small example.

Sample network graph with edges indicating friendships.

The above image shows a sample network graph in which each node represents a different profile and an edge showing a friendship.Considering this scenario, Facebook algorithms may determine that the number of mutual friends between A and F is 2 and may update your feed and friend suggestions.

         So, whenever you press a key on your keyboard, make a call, perform a calculation, start an application or press a remote button, always an algorithms is triggered. So, there are countless examples of many algorithms in our daily life and making our life easier.