I started off my career as an experiment designer before the advent of cheap calculators.  Paying $400 for an HP unit that (gasp!) did logarithms went far beyond my wherewithal in 1974.  That was roughly the tuition for one college quarter at University of Minnesota if memory serves.  I managed to cover that cost plus room and board by working 24 hours a week washing pots and pans at a hospital kitchen.  Those were the days!

Calculating effects from the two-level factorial designs I did that summer as an intern at a chemical research lab required a lot of hand calculations—many numbers to add and subtract.  Thankfully a fellow named Yates developed an algorithm after these experiments were invented in the 1930s.  Following his directions one could tally things up and even do check sums without having to think much.  That’s what algorithms do—provide a recipe for solving problems.

As an engineer I have a healthy respect for algorithms, but my wife, who works as a preschool teacher, thinks this is geeky.  For example, I admired the nerdy professor in the TV show “Numbers” that aired a few years ago.  But every time he expounded on some algorithm that ingeniously saw the pattern of a serial criminal, she just laughed.  Ironically she is now hooked on a show called “Person of Interest” that is based on predictive policing, that is, using algorithms to calculate a crime to come.  That scares me!

According to a new book by Christopher Steiner titled Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World (see this Wall Street Journal review) all of us had best be on our guard against seemingly clever ways to systematically solve problems.  It seems that the engineers, mathematicians, programmers and statisticians who come up with these numerical recipes invaded Wall Street.  They became known as the “Quants”—dominating the way stocks now get traded.

The problem with all this (even I have to admit) is that these systematic approaches to things take all the fun out of making choices.  Do we really want algorithms to pick our soul mates, invest our money, etcetera?  I am up for algorithms like Yate’s that quickly solve mathematical problems.  A good example of this is the first known algorithm recorded on clay tablets in 2500 B. C. that helped Sumerian traders divvy up a given amount of grain equally to a varying number of recipients.  However when things become capricious with many unknowns that are unknowable being thrown into the mix, I’d rather make my own decisions guided by wise counsel.

There is an elephant in the room whenever it comes to discussing computer algorithms, particularly highly automated ones. Almost all such algorithms are inaccurate. They are inaccurate for many reasons, the most important of which is that human behavior is fickle. The inaccuracy could be shockingly high.

–          Kaiser Fung, author of Numbers Rule Our World

I really shouldn’t bring this up, but do you suppose certain politician might be spending a lot of money on algorithmic solutions to how they can win election?  Do these algorithms have any qualms about turning their protagonists into nabobs of negativism?  I do not believe that an algorithm has any heart, unfortunately.  An algorithm is like Honey Badger—it just don’t care.