Computation
Origin
from French computer or Latin computare, from com- ‘together’ + putare ‘to settle (an account).
Definitions
- 1a : the act or action of computing : calculation
- b : the use or operation of a computer
- 2: a system of reckoning
Description
Computation is any type of calculation or use of computing technology in information processing. Computation is a process following a well-defined model understood and expressed as, for example, an algorithm, or a protocol. Computation can be classified by mainly three unique criteria: digital versus analog, sequential versus parallel versus concurrent, batch versus interactive.
In practice, digital computation aids simulation of natural processes (for example, evolutionary computation), including those that are naturally described by analog models of computation (for example, artificial neural network). Otherwise, calculation is a term for the computation of numbers, while computation is a wider reaching term for information processing in general.[1]
