Unit 5 Vocab

Procedural abstraction

Provides a name for a process and allows a procedure to be used only knowing what it does, not how it does it.

Modularity

The subdivision of a computer program into separate subprograms.

Function/Procedure

A named group of programming instructions that may have parameters and return values; also known as method or function.

Parameters

Input variables of a function/procedure.

Arguments

Specify the values of the parameters when a procedure is called.

Array or List

An ordered sequence of values.

Traversing

Accessing elements in a list, which can be complete (all elements) or partial (some elements).

Linear search (sequential search) algorithms

Check each element of a list, in order, until the desired value is found or all elements have been checked.

Binary search algorithms

Starts at the middle of a sorted data set and eliminates half of the data, repeating until the desired value is found.

Software library

Contains functions/procedures that may be used in creating new programs.

Application program interfaces (API)

Specifications for how programs, functions or procedures behave and can be used by other software.

Simulation

A representation that uses varying sets of values to reflect the changing state of a phenomenon.

Problem

A general description of a task that can (or cannot) be solved algorithmically.

Decision problem

A problem with a yes/no answer.

Optimization problem

A problem with the goal of finding the 'best' solution among many.

Efficiency

An estimation of the amount of computational resources used by an algorithm.

Reasonable amount of time

Algorithms with a polynomial efficiency or slower.

Unreasonable amount of time

Algorithms with exponential or factorial efficiencies.

Heuristic

An approach to a problem that produces a solution that is not guaranteed to be optimal.

Decidable problem

A decision problem for which an algorithm can be written to produce a correct output for all inputs.

Undecidable problem

A problem for which no algorithm can be constructed that is always capable of providing a correct yes-or-no answer.

Instance

specific input of a problem (ex; sorting is a problem; soring the list ( 2, 3, 7, 1) is an instance of the problem.