Question

These terms were used in my data structures textbook, but the explanation was very terse and unclear. I think it has something to do with how much knowledge the algorithm has at each stage of computation.

(Please, don’t link to the Wikipedia page: I’ve already read it and I am still looking for a clarification. An explanation as if I’m twelve years old and/or an example would be much more helpful.)

Answer 1

Wikipedia

The Wikipedia page is quite clear:

In computer science, an online algorithm is one that can process its
input piece-by-piece in a serial fashion, i.e., in the order that the
input is fed to the algorithm, without having the entire input
available from the start. In contrast, an offline algorithm is given
the whole problem data from the beginning and is required to output an
answer which solves the problem at hand. (For example, selection sort
requires that the entire list be given before it can sort it, while
insertion sort doesn’t.)

Let me expand on the above:

An offline algorithm requires all information BEFORE the algorithm starts. In the Wikipedia example, selection sort is offline because step 1 is Find the minimum value in the list. To do this, you need to have the entire list available – otherwise, how could you possibly know what the minimum value is? You cannot.

Insertion sort, by contrast, is online because it does not need to know anything about what values it will sort and the information is requested WHILE the algorithm is running. Simply put, it can grab new values at every iteration.

Still not clear?

Think of the following examples (for four year olds!). David is asking you to solve two problems.

In the first problem, he says:

“I’m, going to give you two balls of different masses and you need to
drop them at the same time from a tower.. just to make sure Galileo
was right. You can’t use a watch, we’ll just eyeball it.”

If I gave you only one ball, you’d probably look at me and wonder what you’re supposed to be doing. After all, the instructions were pretty clear. You need both balls at the beginning of the problem. This is an offline algorithm.

For the second problem, David says

“Okay, that went pretty well, but now I need you to go ahead and kick
a couple of balls across a field.”

I go ahead and give you the first ball. You kick it. Then I give you the second ball and you kick that. I could also give you a third and fourth ball (without you even knowing that I was going to give them to you). This is an example of an online algorithm. As a matter of fact, you could be kicking balls all day.

I hope this was clear 😀