Book Title: 9 Algorithms That Changed The Future, The Ingenious Ideas That Drive Today's Computers
Author: John MacCormick
ISBN: 978-0-691-14714-7
Go to Answer Key
Go to 2017 Directory of Authors & Books
This book will take an average high school student about 4-6 days to read, averaging about 2.5 hours a day. For a high school student, it is a medium read. The reason why this book is not difficult is to the fact that most high school students are familiar with technology. John does a great job explaining algorithms and search engines. To me, the most exciting parts of the book were chapters 2-3, where he explained search engines and Google's PageRank technology. The most difficult parts of the book were chapters 4,7, and 9. Those chapters cover public key cryptography, data compressions, and digital signatures.
I highly recommend this book to any high school student who is dabbling in programming or is thinking of studying computer science in college. This book will provide you with an edge in understanding why these are benchmark tools in today's high tech industry. John also provides a short history of each algorithm. This is great background knowledge to have when you are attending computer science courses in college.
Here are the reading comprehension questions:
Chapter 1: Introduction, What Are the Extraordinary Ideas Computers Use Every Day?
1. What is an algorithm?
Chapter 2: Search Engine Indexing, Finding Needles in the World’s Biggest Haystack
2. What are the main tasks of a search engine?
3. What was MSN first rebranded to?
4. What was MSN rebranded to second?
5. Who were the first search engines in 1994?
6. Which commercial company offered a search engine service in 1995?
7. What is the most fundamental idea behind any search engine?
8. A phrase query is a query that searches for an exact phrase, rather than just the occurrence of some words anywhere on a page. True or False
9. What does relevance mean to computer scientist?
10. What is the Word-Location Trick?
Chapter 3: PageRank, The Technology That Launched Google
11. What was the name of the first Silicon Valley technology company that started in a garage?
12. What was the name of the founder?
13. What was the name of the second technology company started in a garage?
14. Who were the founders?
15. What was the name of the 3rd company founded in a garage?
16. What were the names of the founders?
17. Google was made popular by its ____________________________ algorithm.
18. What is a Page Rank algorithm?
19. What is the hyperlink trick?
20. “If you have no other information, the number of incoming links that a web page has can be a helpful indicator of how useful, or “___________________,” the page is likely to be.
21. What is the Authority Trick?
22. What is a cycle?
23. What is the Surfer Authority Score?
24. What is web spam?
Chapter 4: Public Key Cryptography, Sending Secrets on a Postcard
25. What do computer scientists consider a shared secret?
26. What is the shared secret called?
27. What does “decrypt” mean?
28. What does RSA stand for in the famous public key cryptosystem?
Chapter 5: Error-Correcting Codes, Mistakes That Fix Themselves
29. What are the 3 fundamental jobs computers perform?
30. What do computer scientist call well-known patterns?
31. What are messages made up of?
Chapter 6: Pattern Recognition, Learning from Experience
32. What is pattern recognition?
33. There are two strategies used in computer pattern recognition. What are they?
Chapter 7: Data Compression, Something for Nothing
34. What is lossless compression algorithm?
35. What is lossy compression?
36. What is a fancy name for a million pixels?
37. What do compression algorithms do?
Chapter 8: Databases, The Quest for Consistency
38. What two major transaction-processing issues do databases address?
39. Our “To-Do List” is the computer scientist “_________________ logging.”
Chapter 9: Digital Signatures, Who Really Wrote This Software?
40. Who are the root certificate authorities?
41. What is the most spectacular achievement of computer science?
Chapter 10: What is Computable?
42. What is “.exe”?
43. What does executable mean?
Chapter 11: Conclusion, More Genius at Your Fingertips?
44. What are “zero knowledge protocols”?
45. What do “zero knowledge protocols” achieve?
46. What are “distributed hash tables”?
47. What is the “Byzantine fault tolerance” algorithm?
48. Which cryptographic hash function is no longer recommended?
Author: John MacCormick
ISBN: 978-0-691-14714-7
Go to Answer Key
Go to 2017 Directory of Authors & Books
This book will take an average high school student about 4-6 days to read, averaging about 2.5 hours a day. For a high school student, it is a medium read. The reason why this book is not difficult is to the fact that most high school students are familiar with technology. John does a great job explaining algorithms and search engines. To me, the most exciting parts of the book were chapters 2-3, where he explained search engines and Google's PageRank technology. The most difficult parts of the book were chapters 4,7, and 9. Those chapters cover public key cryptography, data compressions, and digital signatures.
I highly recommend this book to any high school student who is dabbling in programming or is thinking of studying computer science in college. This book will provide you with an edge in understanding why these are benchmark tools in today's high tech industry. John also provides a short history of each algorithm. This is great background knowledge to have when you are attending computer science courses in college.
Here are the reading comprehension questions:
Chapter 1: Introduction, What Are the Extraordinary Ideas Computers Use Every Day?
1. What is an algorithm?
Chapter 2: Search Engine Indexing, Finding Needles in the World’s Biggest Haystack
2. What are the main tasks of a search engine?
3. What was MSN first rebranded to?
4. What was MSN rebranded to second?
5. Who were the first search engines in 1994?
6. Which commercial company offered a search engine service in 1995?
7. What is the most fundamental idea behind any search engine?
8. A phrase query is a query that searches for an exact phrase, rather than just the occurrence of some words anywhere on a page. True or False
9. What does relevance mean to computer scientist?
10. What is the Word-Location Trick?
Chapter 3: PageRank, The Technology That Launched Google
11. What was the name of the first Silicon Valley technology company that started in a garage?
12. What was the name of the founder?
13. What was the name of the second technology company started in a garage?
14. Who were the founders?
15. What was the name of the 3rd company founded in a garage?
16. What were the names of the founders?
17. Google was made popular by its ____________________________ algorithm.
18. What is a Page Rank algorithm?
19. What is the hyperlink trick?
20. “If you have no other information, the number of incoming links that a web page has can be a helpful indicator of how useful, or “___________________,” the page is likely to be.
21. What is the Authority Trick?
22. What is a cycle?
23. What is the Surfer Authority Score?
24. What is web spam?
Chapter 4: Public Key Cryptography, Sending Secrets on a Postcard
25. What do computer scientists consider a shared secret?
26. What is the shared secret called?
27. What does “decrypt” mean?
28. What does RSA stand for in the famous public key cryptosystem?
Chapter 5: Error-Correcting Codes, Mistakes That Fix Themselves
29. What are the 3 fundamental jobs computers perform?
30. What do computer scientist call well-known patterns?
31. What are messages made up of?
Chapter 6: Pattern Recognition, Learning from Experience
32. What is pattern recognition?
33. There are two strategies used in computer pattern recognition. What are they?
Chapter 7: Data Compression, Something for Nothing
34. What is lossless compression algorithm?
35. What is lossy compression?
36. What is a fancy name for a million pixels?
37. What do compression algorithms do?
Chapter 8: Databases, The Quest for Consistency
38. What two major transaction-processing issues do databases address?
39. Our “To-Do List” is the computer scientist “_________________ logging.”
Chapter 9: Digital Signatures, Who Really Wrote This Software?
40. Who are the root certificate authorities?
41. What is the most spectacular achievement of computer science?
Chapter 10: What is Computable?
42. What is “.exe”?
43. What does executable mean?
Chapter 11: Conclusion, More Genius at Your Fingertips?
44. What are “zero knowledge protocols”?
45. What do “zero knowledge protocols” achieve?
46. What are “distributed hash tables”?
47. What is the “Byzantine fault tolerance” algorithm?
48. Which cryptographic hash function is no longer recommended?
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