A few years ago, some concerned citizens of TCS, like Sanjeev Arora and Bernard Chazelle, came up with this idea to promote the applications of algorithmic ideas more widely. Chazelle’s essay The Algorithm: Idiom of Modern Science is an example of this (with lots of nice pictures). The name for this world view seems to be “The Algorithmic Lens”.
I like the way that sounds, but it makes me imagine how kids will scorch ants with a magnifying glass. Maybe that is not the best mental imagery to frame interdisciplinary research.
This post is about an application of algorithmic thinking in health metrics. I hope I don’t burn the public health docs with my highly focused beam of algorithms. (That reminds me, if you can’t understand what I’m talking about, and want to, you can leave a comment with questions. I’ll answer. It’s likely that no one else understands what I’m talking about either.)
Healthy Algorithms 