Algorithms’ World-Changing Impact In Infographic Form

By Nick Venable | Updated

If you go up to a common person on the street and ask them how algorithms affect their lives, or even to name a specific one, you might find yourself facing a perplexed gaze. Perhaps I shouldn’t insult our population and just admit that I’m talking about myself in that example. I know that algorithms are computational methods of fixing problems, but I still haven’t figured out a way to pull two of the same socks out of my drawer, so I could always stand to learn a few things.

The infographic-militia over at CollegeDegreeSearch.com have once again made it easy for laymen to show their faces during dinner party conversations, this time with an infographic shortlisting the most important ways in which algorithms have affected our modern lives. Granted, they aren’t sharing any new information here, and you won’t be guiding those dinner party conversations, but it lays out its facts in an entertaining way and you might learn something you didn’t know before.

After namechecking some of history’s more influential algorithms, the graphic then lists the five areas of life most affected by these “equations with attitude,” most notably in computers, GPS tracking, the military, and the Internet. Funny, I thought it was an “Al Gore”-ithm that was responsible for that last one. “Are Euclidding me?” Maybe Google isn’t sending me to the most relevant of the 150,000,000 websites out there.

If you have trouble reading some of the smaller text on the infographic, you can find a bigger version right here.

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