In another thread haberdasher mused, "Do I begin to see an algorithm that grinds out these changes: work both ends of the chain down to four- or even three-letter words, which have great flexibility, and then join the two threads..."

What's the difference between an "algorithm" and a method/methodology?

I see them as similar, though I think an algorithm is more a step-by-step procedure, while a methodology is more general. When I do research, I often develop alogorithms for the data collectors to precisely follow. Yet, the entire plan for the research is my methodology.

The following is copied from dictionary.com

Usage Note: Methodology can properly refer to the theoretical analysis of the methods appropriate to a field of study or to the body of methods and principles particular to a branch of knowledge. In this sense, one may speak of objections to the methodology of a geographic survey (that is, objections dealing with the appropriateness of the methods used) or of the methodology of modern cognitive psychology (that is, the principles and practices that underlie research in the field). In recent years, however, methodology has been increasingly used as a pretentious substitute for method in scientific and technical contexts, as in The oil company has not yet decided on a methodology for restoring the beaches. People may have taken to this practice by influence of the adjective methodological to mean “pertaining to methods.”

Methodological may have acquired this meaning because people had already been using the more ordinary adjective methodical to mean “orderly, systematic.” But the misuse of methodology obscures an important conceptual distinction between the tools of scientific investigation (properly methods) and the principles that determine how such tools are deployed and interpreted.

I agree with Kalleh. When I used the term I meant to imply an almost mechanical procedure that could be followed without much thought that would by brute force arrive at the desired result over the course of time; a highly detailed flow-chart; a cookbook. That's one method. Induction and deduction are other methods, and there are much more general methods as well.

Then again, an almost mechanical procedure that could be followed without much thought that would by brute force arrive at dog food is an Alporithm.

I thought Alporithm was the way dogs multiply. That's why they like Napierian bones...

[This message was edited by haberdasher on Mon Jun 23rd, 2003 at 19:19.]

Algorithm has to do with the manner in which the popularly elected Presidential candidate loses anyway. It was invented by the guy who worte Laddy Chad-erly's Loser.

Algorithm has to do with the manner in which the popularly elected Presidential candidate loses anyway. It was invented by the guy who wrote Laddy Chad-erly's Loser.

Algorithm is the reason that former Presidential candidate and his wife have so few children. (But not none. It isn't a very reliable method.)

Putting together haberdasher's two comments:
algorithm - "the reason that former Presidential candidate and his wife have so few children" is "an almost mechanical procedure followed without much thought, by brute force"

A commentary on the private lives of Al and Tipper?
(Is Tipper an aptonym? -- he asked innocently. )

Fine; now can you work in Napier's bones, too?

Apparently they couldn't, or they'd have multiplied.