How Digital Systems “Think” : Data & Algorithms

How does your social media feed know you love football? How does a streaming service recommend the perfect movie? The answer is two words: Data and Algorithms.

Data: This is the information you provide. Every click, ‘like’, search, and video you watch is a piece of data.

Algorithm: This is a set of rules, like a recipe, that tells the system what to do with that data. An algorithm’s job is to analyse your data (your “ingredients”) to predict what you’ll want to see next (the “dish”).

Together, they are powerful, decision-making instructions that determine what you see online.