Question

Web Research Project for Chapter 10: Influential Algorithms

Algorithms play an important role in our daily lives. They are influential in the improvement of communications, medical care, the financial world, and more.

For this project, use the Internet to research algorithms and how they have influenced the worlds of business and medicine. Write an essay (2 pages) detailing your research on the following:

What are the most influential and/or most interesting algorithms in the business world and what do they do?

What are the most influential and/or most interesting algorithms in the medical world and what do they do?

Pick the one algorithm that you would consider to be the most influential or most interesting and explain how it could affect you personally and why.

Answer 1

Influential Algorithm in Business World

There was a time not too long ago when search engines battled it out for Internet supremacy. But along came Google and its innovative PageRank algorithm. Today, Google accounts for 66.7% of the U.S. market share in core search, followed by Microsoft (18.1%), Yahoo (11.2%), Ask (2.6%), and AOL (1.4%). Google now dominates the market to the point where we don't even question it anymore; for many of us, it's our primary avenue of entry into the Internet.

PageRank works in conjunction with automated programs called spiders or crawlers, and a large index of keywords and their locations. The algorithm works by evaluating the number and quality of links to a page to get a rough estimate of how important the website is. The basic idea is that the more important or worthwhile websites are likely to receive more links from other websites. It's basically a popularity contest. In addition to this, the PageRank algorithm considers the frequency and location of keywords within a web page and how long the web page has existed.

Influential Algorithm in Medical World

Framingham Coronary Heart Disease Risk Prediction Chart          

Purpose: To use the Framingham heart study coronary heart disease risk    prediction chart to evaluate an adult for risk of coronary heart disease

Specialty: Cardiovascular diseases, interventional cardiology,cardiothoracic radiology, Trauma surgery,    Thoracic surgery

Objective: Risk factors, prevention.

ICD-10: 125

Description: the Framingham heart study coronary heart disease risk prediction chart is one mechanism of using the Framingham data to give a risk assessment for individual patient. It is based on the summation of points assigned by lookup of risk factors from tables, avoiding the more complex calculations used by other approaches.