The Economist reports on the growing use of algorithms in business
economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story...Posted Sep 19, 2007, 2:38 AM UTC
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economist.com
Wow, the epiphany of it all. "A computing firm that uses algorithms"!!!!
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They should move to a synchronous, signal-based business model. :)
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It is good that the ppl who read this rag are exposed to these articles - it helps them realize that there is a science behind what they do.
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More importantly, for us programmers, those who read that rag often have enough money to hire us to write more algorithms, which will make us money. (hopefully it helps enough of them make money that they continue to hire us)
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Yeah. I know a guy with a PhD in Mathematics (Topology) that makes big bank advising financial companies.
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The Financial Times just had almost this exact same article a few days ago. Why? What company is this a PR hit for?
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Talk about your vagaries of fashion though: in an earlier day the PRs would have been calling this stuff 'artificial intelligence', right?
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The article makes algorithms sound exotic and mysterious.
Someone should write The Economist and explain to them that they've been using the GIGO algorithm ever since they started publishing.
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What's up with the 15 digit credit-card number?
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The real question is - how do you get a job doing this kinda stuff without having to go back for a fooking PhD?
(Er... let's say you just have a measly little MBA instead, for instance.)
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[deleted]
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Has anyone though about applying comp sci algorithms to other structures, such as businesses and such? I mean such as a business hierarchy being a tree.
Edit: clarification b/c it sounded redundant
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Sure. Businesses deallocate employee subtrees all the time.
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The Economist is a useless rag. http://exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=10127&IBLOCK_ID=35
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An interesting combination of apparently-valid reportage and vicious hatchet job.
As with the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, I like reading the Economist because it's a publication where I almost always know more after reading it than I did before, despite a long history of manifest problems with each of these news organizations.
It's the news-for-morons organizations like the U.S. CNN and the organ-of-the-Republican-party organizations like Fox that I really can't abide.
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like ur mom
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I think I never bought the Economist (or only once), but sometimes they have online articles that aren't that bad.
The Exile article seemed a useless, angry, rag, however.
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And there I stopped.
I agree with your distaste about the two stereotypes in the first sentence. I don't think the rest of the article is particularly well written either.
I posted the article not for edification but as a reference to how the subject is treated in the popular press. I scan these types of articles to see what is emerging into general consciousness.
As an Unfrozen 1970's Programmer, your "algorithms" frighten me. When I see a credit card number, I think, "Oh no, is it being stored in BCD, in binary, or in ASCII?" Because I am a 1970's programmer--that is the way I think. But there is one thing I do know...your "algorithm" is not optimized for the CDC-6600.
I <3 you, frozen caveman programmer!
ah - that made me smile :) ... unless you are upset that they've confused mathematicians with computer scientists :)
I don't think anyone would confuse a computer scientist with a mathematician.
Some you can - and vice versa