On: Send Me Your Nominations for Algorithms That Changed The World

[shrughes]

I would nominate RSA.

[fgimenez → shrughes]

On a related note, the Rabin-Miller primality test is needed just to find the primes for RSA to work.

[dfranke → shrughes]

I'd consider DH slightly more important.

[brl → shrughes]

I think it would be hard to argue that any other single modern algorithm had as much effect on the world as RSA.

[corentin → brl]

MP3?

[russell → corentin]

Discrete cosine transform and its variants gave us jpeg and mp3

[brl → russell]

Oh, you're absolutely right of course. I completely overlooked that. In that case, I think that the top two prizes should go to one Fourier transform related algorithm and one algorithm from public-key cryptography.