English

When are two algorithms the same?

General Literature 2020-06-11 v1 Data Structures and Algorithms Logic in Computer Science

Abstract

People usually regard algorithms as more abstract than the programs that implement them. The natural way to formalize this idea is that algorithms are equivalence classes of programs with respect to a suitable equivalence relation. We argue that no such equivalence relation exists.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0811.0811,
  title  = {When are two algorithms the same?},
  author = {Andreas Blass and Nachum Dershowitz and Yuri Gurevich},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0811.0811},
  year   = {2020}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T11:38:36.287Z