Talk:Timeline of algorithms

message: An algorithm is a procedure that solves a fundamental (and simply formulated) problem, for exemple sorting an array of integers or computing Voronoi cells from a set of points. A complex piece of software, an encoding or a format is not an algorithm.
For exemple cyphers do not belong on this list. I accept things like Diffie-Hellman or RSA, but certainly not MD5, RC4, AES, etc... Those are applications, not algorithms. That's like saying JPEG is an algorithm. It is not, but the way you compute the DCT is.
Likewise an encoding is not an algorithm. The procedure which does the encoding is however, but  the two shouldn't be confused. That's why I wouldn't put things like Hamming codes, Gray codes,  Reed-Solomon and the likes. The trick itself is interesting, but the encoding procedure is not notable. 
User:tonigonenstein
I personally don't agree. MD5, CRC, RS codes to have place. Same as MP3. They are algorithms. 2A02:168:2000:5B:CC4D:BB9A:938:B537 (talk) 04:31, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

message: Couldn't some common meta heuristics like genetic algorithms, swarm intelligence, and ant colony optimization be said to exist from the first eukaryotes, the Cambrian explosion, and the first ants, for example? Certainly if these weren't in operation, the problem of "how to create an algorithm timeline page" wouldn't have been solved, because we wouldn't be here to solve it.
--Dbabbitt 20:37, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Meta Heuristics in the Wild 

message: It was in 1930s and 1940s, mostly started with Enrico Fermi and Stanislaw Ulam, before, during and after Manhattan project. Initially done by hand, but later on ENIAC, by von Numann, implemented it in 1947 probably. It is used to this day (physics, finance, science, weather forecasting, computer graphics) in various forms and improvements (Metropolis algorithm which is mentioned in the timeline already, but later). This article by Metropolis from 'Los Alamos Science' Special Issue 1987, gives a lot of history of Monte Carlo - https://permalink.lanl.gov/object/tr?what=info:lanl-repo/lareport/LA-UR-88-9067  . Similarly these methods requires random numbers (both sequence of uniform integers, then converted into different distributions, like gaussian), so they were probably also invented at the same time. I wonder if there are other materials on this matter and more exact dates, as not everything was published in this early days of computing. 2A02:168:2000:5B:CC4D:BB9A:938:B537 (talk) 03:37, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Monte Carlo methods and random number generations 

message: I think '263 AD – Gaussian elimination described by Liu Hui' is somehow inaccurate. There are known texts even older than that mentioning Gaussian elimination in the ancient China. I think almost 150 BC some of them mention it, and more complete texts from 179 AD about it. Also I think it should be mentioned in the table the popularization of the method by Newton, Gauss and Jordan, which leads to its current wide spread use. They were probably not aware of Chine methods and texts.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:168:2000:5B:CC4D:BB9A:938:B537 (talk) 03:43, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gaussian elimination