Do you know how old algo­rithms real­ly are? Or where they came from? What is an algo­rithm? Are there dif­fer­ent types of algo­rithms…? Muham­mad al-Khwariz­i­mi was a 9^th cen­tu­ry Per­sian astronomer and math­e­mati­cian. His text­book On Indi­an Numer­als was trans­lat­ed into Latin four cen­turies lat­er. It is con­sid­ered the most impor­tant source for the Indo-Ara­bic numer­al sys­tem and writ­ten arith­metic. His sur­name even sounds pho­net­i­cal­ly like an algo­rithm “Algo­ris­mi”. Ada Lovelace was the first per­son to write down an algo­rithm intend­ed for a com­put­er in 1843. She is con­sid­ered to be the first female programmer.

In the lat­est of her Duet inter­views, Dr Cal­daro­la, author of Big Data and Law, and IT-Expert Prof. Dr Katha­ri­na Zweig talk about algo­rithms and heuris­tics and their dai­ly use.