Noun

(en noun)

A process by which a task is completed; a way of doing something (followed by the adposition of, to or for before the purpose of the process):

* , chapter=3

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=One saint's day in mid-term a certain newly appointed suffragan-bishop came to the school chapel, and there preached on “The Inner Life.”  He at once secured attention by his informal method , and when presently the coughing of Jarvis […] interrupted the sermon, he altogether captivated his audience with a remark about cough lozenges being cheap and easily procurable.}}

* {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=May-June, author= William E. Conner

, title= An Acoustic Arms Race , volume=101, issue=3, page=206-7, magazine=(American Scientist) , passage=Earless ghost swift moths become “invisible” to echolocating bats by forming mating clusters close

A type of theatrical acting wherein the actor utilizes his personal emotions from personal experience to portray a scripted scene.

(programming, object-oriented) A subroutine or function belonging to a class or object.

(slang) Marijuana.

Noun

(en noun)

A precise step-by-step plan for a computational procedure that possibly begins with an input value and yields an output value in a finite number of steps.

* 1990 , Cormen, Leiserson, and Rivest, Introduction to Algorithms'': page 1. Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 1999 (''23rd printing )

Informally, an algorithm''''' is any well-defined computational procedure that takes some value, or set of values, as input and produces some value, or set of values, as output. An ' algorithm is thus a sequence of computational steps that transform the input into the output.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-26, author=(Leo Hickman)

, volume=189, issue=7, page=26, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= How algorithms rule the world , passage=The use of algorithms in policing is one example of their increasing influence on our lives. And, as their ubiquity spreads, so too does the debate around whether we should allow ourselves to become so reliant on them – and who, if anyone, is policing their use.}}

(archaic) Calculation with Arabic numerals; algorism.