Bud Collins and the algorithms among us
Source: John Martin
An algorithm — in simple terms — is a method, a formula, a way of answering a question or solving a problem. And there are human algorithms who walk among us.
The word algorithm comes from Persian mathematician, Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khwarizmi, noted for his work with algebra. Translated to Latin, his name is Algoritmi. Remarkably, 1,200 years after he lived and worked in the royal court of Baghdad, he is the darling of the digital universe.
Today, the speed and adroitness of algorithms form a digital backbone for the modern technological state. Corporations rely on their ability to predict behavior. Industries lean on their reliability. They’re often responsible for replacing humans on the job. “Bad news, hon,” says a husband arriving home in a New Yorker cartoon. “I’ve been replaced by an app.”
Still, we must recognize that humans often possess algorithmic skills that match or even surpass their digital cousins. Surely some of their judgments, decisions, creativity, and endurance would make Algoritmi proud.
Biographer Robert Caro has published 3,963 pages in five books appearing over 41 years, all about two men, Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson. “Turn every page,” Caro said recently, explaining what amounts to an extraordinarily effective approach for harvesting facts from dry, voluminous records and files.
By the time of his death in 1990, John Aherne, an Augustinian priest and former president of Merrimack College, had written 1,018 entries in the three-volume Encyclopedic Dictionary of Religion (most of any contributor), 260 pages of autobiography (in two volumes), 14 volumes of poetry, and an 87-page series of extended essays on six Catholic authors.
What this means is that there are humans among us whose work habits embody algorithms at their best.
Or their worst. In a recent New Yorker article titled “Algorithm Anyone? Airline Elite Status Madness,” writer Gary Sernovitz explained why he chose to scramble aboard a series of unneeded airline flights to sustain his boarding and seating status.
“I told myself that we are all obligated to prove that sometimes human beings are more than absurd, predictable machines.”
Can humans train themselves to act like algorithms? Tom Griffiths, co-author of “Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions,” admits it is a tricky problem.
Some questions are just too hard, it develops, and some situations don’t quite line up with what the human’s algorithmic solution can accomplish.
“People’s intuitions are pretty reasonable,” he says, “they correspond to sensible algorithmic solutions, finding a good tradeoff between the cost of thinking more and the quality of the solutions they produce.”
Which brings us to the late Bud Collins, the Boston Globe sportswriter, broadcaster, and historian whose memorial service is Friday. Between 1980 and 2008, Collins compiled and published three encyclopedic books. In that 28-year span, Collins created 2,370 pages of reports, profiles, histories, and summaries — all about tennis — poured into his books, it seems, from a celebrated database: his notes and his memory.
Absolutely algorithmic.
John Martin is a retired ABC News national correspondent.
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