ABSTRACT

As described in Chapter 18, computers were traditionally built to calculate the solution to numerical problems such as the determination of the roots of an algebraic equation, or to process numerical data, e.g., the statistical calculation of national consensus data. However, for the last 40 years or more, a great deal of important work has also been done by computers for nonnumerical problems, such as sorting, searching, word or language processing, and solving combinatorial problems in software development, data communication, and the simulation of various biological, chemical, and physical processes. The design and analysis of computer algorithms have been developed in the context of such applications.