KNOWING THE ALGORITHMS

The importance of an algorithm resides in showing the way to carry out processes and to solve mathematical problems mechanically or of another type. The same as the mathematical functions, the algorithms receive an entrance and they transform it in an exit, behaving like a black box. However, not all black box that transforms an entrance into an exit you can consider an algorithm: so that an algorithm can be considered as such, it should be an orderly, finite and defined (formalization of their behavior) sequence of instructions. This way you can continue and to predict the behavior of the algorithm for any possible (except for algorithms probabilistas that he/she usually has a different exit) entrance, starting from the pursuit of that sequence of instructions that like it is ordered and defined, he/she doesn't give place to ambiguities and their appearance can be continued.
The algorithm concept, although similar and obviously related, he/she should not made a mistake with the program concept. While the first one is the specification of a group of steps (operations, instructions, orders,...) guided to the resolution of a problem (method), the second is that group of operations specified in a certain programming language and for a concrete computer, susceptible of being executed (or compiled or interpreted). An algorithm, strictly speaking, it cannot be executed until it is implemented, either in a programming language, in an electric circuit, in a mechanical apparatus, using paper and pencil, or in some other computation model.

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