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might be interested inpurchasing,based on the products youhave
looked at or bought on the site.The National Security Agency of
the U.S. government uses high-level algorithms to sift through
the countless bits of data it tracks from communications across
the globe in its search for global threats.
Algorithms have taken on a new importance in the world of
stock market trading. By programming information such as the
price of a stock, its rise or fall in price, the number of shares
traded, and other factors, a trader can develop an algorithm to
automatically buy or sell stocks without the need for a human.
Some market players, known as high-frequency traders, use
algorithms to conduct millions of transactions per day, some-
times buying and selling a stock in a few milliseconds. In fact,
high-frequency trading often accounts for more than half of
the entire daily volume of shares traded on the major U.S. stock
exchanges. High-frequency trading got a lot of press for trig-
gering the “flash crash” of May 6, 2010. In just moments, major
stock market averages plummeted briefly to ridiculous prices
before rapidly recovering. However, algorithms are also used
for trading by many major investment banks,
pension funds
,
and mutual funds.Algorithms can work not only as a short-term
trading vehicle but also as a risk-management tool by removing
the element of human emotion from trading.
Encryption
Encryption has been important to humanity ever since the de-
velopment of the written word.The ancient Greeks and Romans
used simple
ciphers
to transmit codedmessages.“Caesar’s Cipher,”
Math and Information Technology
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