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Argentine cuisine

Argentine cuisine is described as a blending of cultures, from the Indigenous peoples of Argentina who focused on ingredients such as humita, potatoes, cassava, peppers, tomatoes, beans, and yerba mate, to Mediterranean influences brought by the Spanish during the colonial period. This led to cultural blending of criollos (gauchos and early Spanish settlers), Indigenous, and sub-Saharan African (due to slave trading) in the cuisine. Later, this was complemented by the significant influx of Italian and Spanish immigrants to Argentina during the 19th and 20th centuries, who incorporated plenty of their food customs and dishes such as pizzas, pasta and Spanish tortillas.

Beef is a main part of the Argentine diet due to its vast production in the country's plains. In fact, Argentine annual consumption of beef has averaged 100 kg per capita, approaching 180 kg per capita during the 19th century; consumption averaged 67.7 kg in 2007.

Beyond asado (the Argentine barbecue), no other dish more genuinely matches the national identity. Nevertheless, the country's vast area, and its cultural diversity, have led to a local cuisine of various dishes.

The great immigratory waves consequently imprinted a large influence in the Argentine cuisine, after all Argentina was the second country in the world with the most immigrants with 6.6 million, only second to the United States with 27 million, and ahead of other immigratory receptor countries such as Canada, Brazil, Australia, etc.

Argentine people have a reputation for their love of eating. Social gatherings are commonly centred on sharing a meal. Invitations to have dinner at home are generally viewed as a symbol of friendship, warmth, and integration. Sunday family lunch is considered the most significant meal of the week, whose highlights often include asado or pasta.

Another feature of Argentine cuisine is the preparation of homemade food such as French fries, patties, and pasta to celebrate a special occasion, to meet friends, or to honour someone. Homemade food is also seen as a way to show affection.

Argentine restaurants include a great variety of cuisines, prices, and flavours. Large cities tend to host everything from high-end international cuisine to bodegones (inexpensive traditional hidden taverns), less stylish restaurants, and bars and canteens offering a range of dishes at affordable prices.

History
Amerindians lived in Argentina thousands of years before European explorers arrived. They mostly lived off of agriculture, as well as hunting, gathering, and fishing. Generally, the most common crops at this time were maize, potatoes, common beans, quinoa, and squash.

The Argentinian native people could be divided in three groups based on their main modality of acquiring food:

 * Hunters and gatherers who inhabited the Patagonia, Pampa, and Chaco regions.
 * Farmers in the northwestern, Cuyo, and Cordoba's mountain regions who mostly grew squash, melons, and sweet potatoes. These groups had great influence from Andean-Incan tradition.
 * Farmers in the Mesopotamia plains who belonged to the guaraní culture.

Spanish settlers came to Argentina in 1536 and began building chacras where Amerindians would work to harvest the food. The arrival of Europeans brought Argentina into the Columbian Exchange, with ingredients from the Old World such as wheat, grapevine, figs, and several kinds of fruits being introduced to the country for the first time. It was also during the Spanish colonial period that cattle, goat, and pig farming were first introduced to Argentina, forming the foundation of the large Argentine beef industry.

Between 1853 and 1955, 6.6 million immigrants came to live in Argentina from Europe (especially from Italy, Wales, Germany and Switzerland), the Near and Middle East, Russia and Japan. They contributed to the development of Argentine cuisine by encouraging the production of a wider variety of foods. They also bought lands where they built chacras and encouraged the growth of farming. By this point, Argentina was the country with most immigrants only second to the United States.

During the XIX century, social standing was not associated with access to food. The price of beef, fish, and bird meats was cheap and accessible. However, grains and wheat was scarce so bread was very expensive. Some of the most common dishes during this time were soups with pork chunks, cooked partridge with legumes, spinach bread, beef slices, and lamb stew. The most prominent spices were garlic, parsley, and pepper.

By the turn of the century, Argentine Cuisine was on a constant decline due to shortage of several ingredients. However, eating habits began to shift with further immigration which facilitated a gastronomic revolution. Most immigrants in the 1900s came from Italy and Spain. The Italians introduced pizza, as well as a variety of pasta dishes, including spaghetti and lasagna. British, German, Jewish, and other immigrants also settled in Argentina, all bringing their styles of cooking and favorite foods with them. The British brought tea, starting the tradition of teatime. All of these cultures influenced the dishes of Argentina.

At this time, Italian cuisine began to really become a part of the cuisine. The neighborhood of La Boca, Buenos Aires, was the first big Italian hub, and from here plenty of traditionally Italian ingredients and eating habits expanded across the country. Different kinds of pastas such as long noodles or tallarines, gnocchi, ravioli, and cannelloni filled with ricotta cheese became popular along with pizza, fainá (Argentinian version of the traditional Italian farinata), and milanesas. Different ways of preparing dishes were also adopted from Italian immigrants. These included the preparation of ice cream, fish, and shellfish. Spanish immigrants also left their mark, popularizing eating dry nuts, tomato sauce, pesto, olives, and olive oil. Additionally, deli stores started to incorporate traditional Iberian hams and sausages and great varieties of cheeses yet these were more limited. They were also mainly responsible for the massive diffusion of wine consumption, among some other habits. This occurred at the same time that other global products began arriving to Argentina such as saffron, cod, different varieties of beans, chickpeas, additional spices, chocolates, and tea.

Typical foods

Most regions of Argentina are known for their beef-oriented diet. Grilled meat from the asado (barbecue) is a staple, with steak and beef ribs especially common. The term asado itself refers to long strips of flank-cut beef ribs.

Popular items such as chorizo (pork sausage), morcilla (blood sausage), chinchulines (chitterlings), mollejas (sweetbread), and other parts of the animal are also enjoyed.

In Patagonia, however, lamb and chivito (goat) are eaten more frequently than beef. Whole lambs and goats are traditionally cooked over an open fire in a technique known as asado a la estaca.

The most common condiment for asado is chimichurri, a sauce of herbs, garlic and vinegar. Unlike other preparations, Argentines do not include chilli in their version of chimichurri, but it does include a still-spicy, but milder form of red pepper, ají molido.

Breaded and fried meats (milanesas) are used as snacks, in sandwiches, or eaten warm with mashed potatoes, purée. Empanadas, small pastries of meat, cheese, sweet corn, and many other fillings, are a common sight at parties and picnics, or as starters to a meal. They also vary in their looks, since they are folded with a traditional decorative edging called repulgue. The repulgue is not just aesthetic, but also serves as a way to identify the flavor of each empanada since they are traditionally ordered in dozens where people mix and match flavors. Empanadas are one of the most important staples of this country due to the wide array of varieties.

The empanadas seen in Argentina today originate from a Spanish dish from the fifteenth century where travelers used easy-to-carry bread and filled it with a variety of ingredients. Eventually it evolved into a popular gastronomic item and spread across the world. Variations of empanadas both inside and outside of Argentina include the empanada gallega (Galician empanada), a large round meat pie made most commonly with tuna and mackerel (caballa in Spanish).

Vegetables and salads are also eaten by Argentines; tomatoes, onions, lettuce, eggplants, squashes, and zucchini are common side dishes.

Italian staples, such as pizza and pasta, are eaten as commonly as beef. Fideos (noodles), tallarines (fettuccine and tagliatelle), ñoquis (gnocchi) are traditionally served on the 29th day of the month, ravioles, and canelones (cannelloni) can be bought freshly made in many establishments in the larger cities. Italian-style ice cream is served in large parlours and even drive-through businesses. Other Italian staples are polenta, tarta pascualina, and pastafrola.

In Chubut, the Welsh community is known for its teahouses, offering scones and torta galesa, which is rather like torta negra.

A fosforito is a ham and cheese sandwich using puff pastry as the bread. Sandwiches de miga are delicate sandwiches made with crustless buttered English bread, very thinly sliced cured meat, cheese, and lettuce. They are often purchased from entrepreneurial home cooks and may be eaten for a light evening meal.

A sweet paste, dulce de leche is another treasured national food, used to fill cakes and pancakes, spread over toasted bread for breakfast, or served with ice cream. In terms of sweets, Alfajores are another key staple. These are shortbread cookies sandwiched together with chocolate and dulce de leche or a fruit paste. The "policeman's" or "truck driver's" sweet is cheese with quince paste or dulce de membrillo. Dulce de batata is made of sweet potato/yam: this with cheese is the Martín Fierro's sweet. Additionally, ice cream shops or heladerias are a big boom especially in the city of Buenos Aires. Argentinian ice cream comes in plenty of flavors (from fruits to cheesecake and even duce de leche flavors) and has a special smoothness as it follows a recipe very similar to that of Italian gelato.

Apples, pears, peaches, kiwifruits, avocados, and plums are major exports.

A traditional drink of Argentina is an infusion called mate (in Spanish, mate, with the accent on the first syllable [MAH-teh]). The name comes from the hollow gourd from which it is traditionally drunk.

The mate (gourd) or other small cup is filled about three-quarters full with yerba mate, the dried leaves and twigs of the Ilex paraguariensis. The drink, which is rather bitter, is sipped through a metal or cane straw called a bombilla. Mate can be sweetened with sugar, or flavoured with aromatic herbs or dried orange peel.

Hot but not boiling water is poured into the gourd, drunk, then the mate is refilled. The mate is nearly full of leaves, so each refill only makes a small drink, but many refills are possible before the yerba is spent. In small gatherings it is traditional for one mate to be passed from person to person, filled by whoever has the kettle. It is customary not to thank the refiller routinely; a final gracias (thank you) implies that the drinker has had enough.

Drinking mate together is an important social ritual. Mate cocido is the same leaf, which rather than brewed is boiled and served, like tea, with milk and sugar to taste.

Other typical drinks include wine (sometimes with soda water added); tea and coffee are equally important. Quilmes is the national brand of pale lager, named after the town of Quilmes, Buenos Aires, where it was first produced.

Ingredients
Argentine cuisine uses locally-grown cereals, grains, oil seeds, fruits and vegetables, as well as meat.

Meat products have been dominant in the country since the 16th century. The country is regarded as a major beef, pork and poultry producing and consuming country. Certain areas such as those located in the south are usually engaged in activities involving sheep and lamb breeding, and shellfish, crustaceans, molluscs and salmonides fishing.

The vast breeding activity involving any type of cattle has given rise to a highly developed dairy industry that includes products like cow, sheep and camelide, dulce de leche and yogurts. Some of the cheeses from Argentina are reggianito, sardo, provoleta and cremoso. Argentina can also be conceived as a great industry engaged in the production of dried fruits, olives, all types of oils and spices.

In the Mesopotamia region, river fish such as silverside, surubi, dorado or boga are common.

Regional differences
Argentine cuisine is heavily influenced by its European roots and has regional variations. Asado, dulce de leche, empanadas, and yerba mate are found throughout Argentina. In many parts of the country, food is prepared differently and different kinds of foods are made; this includes to a smaller degree food from pre-Columbian times, as in the Northwest.

Central region and la Pampa
This region is composed of the city of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires Province, Córdoba, La Pampa, Santa Fe, and Entre Ríos.

This region, especially within the larger urban areas of Buenos Aires, Rosario, and Córdoba welcomed European immigrants. These were especially of Italian and Spanish descent. Nevertheless, there was also a migratory flow of German, Swiss, and Middle Eastern immigrants arriving in Argentina. As a result, dishes such as pasta, pizza, pucheros (stews), croquetas (fritters), sauces, embutidos (sausages), and chicken and meat courses brought a wider scope of options to daily menus. The bread-making, dessert, pastry, and dairy industries have achieved considerable development in this region.

The above-mentioned dishes have developed a distinctively Argentine nuance. That is why, for example, Argentine pasta includes a wide variety of dishes ranging from spaghetti, fusiles (fusilli), ñoquis (gnocchi), ravioli, cintas (pasta ribbons), and lasagne to the Argentine-made sorrentinos, agnolottis (agnolotti), canelones (cannelloni), and fetuchines (fettuccine).

Pizza—made with very thin, and sometimes thick, high-rising doughs, with or without cheese, cooked in the oven or a la piedra (on a stone oven), and stuffed with numerous ingredients—is a dish which can be found in nearly every corner of the country. Buenos Aires, Rosario, and Córdoba also serve it with fainá, which is a chick pea-flour dough placed over the piece of pizza. People say that what makes Argentine pizza unique is the blending of Italian and Spanish cultures. At the turn of the 19th century, immigrants from Naples and Genoa opened the first pizza bars, though Spanish residents subsequently owned most of the pizza businesses.

Bread products are consumed all around the country. The deeply rooted bread, pastry, and dessert-making tradition derive from blending the above nationalities' products. Bakeries sell not only a wide scope of bread, cookies, and cakes, but also pastries. The latter resembles a sort of roll pastry whose main dough ingredient is either butter or fat and which may be simple or stuffed with dulce de leche, milk, jam, crema pastel, or quince or apple jelly, among other fillings. The most popular type of pastry is said to be that of medialunas (singular: medialuna, literally half-moon, that is to say, crescent), based upon French croissants. Sandwiches de miga are another type of bread products; they are made only with thin layers of white bread (generally referred to as crustless bread) and stuffed with food items ranging from ham and cheese to other more sophisticated combinations such as raw ham, tomatoes, olives, hard-boiled eggs, tuna, lettuce, red pepper, and the like.

Desserts and sweets are usually stuffed or covered with dulce de leche. The latter can be eaten alone or on top of cakes, alfajores, panqueques (crepes), and pastries, or as a topping spread over flan de leche. Chantilly cream is widely consumed and used in preparing sweets and desserts. Additionally, cakes, sponge cakes, and puddings are very popular dishes. Italian ice creams in this region also achieved a significant degree of development by adding local flavours that somehow preserved the local spirit involved in their preparation.

Although asado is eaten all over the country, its origin may be traced back to the Pampas. It entails many types of meat, which are generally eaten as follows: achuras (offal), morcilla (blood sausage), and sometimes also a provoleta (a piece of provolone cheese cooked on the grill with oregano) are eaten first. Then comes the choripán (a kind of spiced sausage made with pork or lamb and placed between two slices of bread), and finally meat such as asado de tira, vacío (flank steak), lomo (tenderloin), colita de cuadril (rump), matambre (rolled stuffed steak cut into slices and served cold), entraña (hanger steak); the list is never-ending. Cabrito al asador (roast kid or goat) is frequently eaten in the province of Córdoba.

Northwest and Cuyo

This region includes the provinces of Jujuy, Salta, Catamarca, Tucumán, Santiago del Estero, La Rioja, San Juan, Mendoza, and San Luis. It is also regarded as the one most influenced by Native Americans, and its foods are closely linked to the Andean-Incan tradition. When preparing regional dishes, potatoes and corn or wheat are almost always used, including quinoa (a cereal typically used in Incan cuisine), peppers, squashes, tomatoes and in some provinces beans. The most celebrated dishes are humita and tamal, in which the corn husk is stuffed with the corn filling itself, seasonings or meat. This region is the most suitable to taste empanadas, particularly those stuffed with meat and offering different types of tempting varieties such as the meat empanada, salteña also filled with potatoes, or the empanada tucumana, which is stuffed with matambre and cut with a knife, or empanadas made with cheese. Empanadas are individual-sized and closed savoury pastries which may be fried or baked in the oven and are generally eaten with the hands.

Stews such as locro, carbonada, pollo al disco, and cazuelas (casseroles) are also typical dishes characterizing this region, which also include pumpkin or potato pudding stuffed with meat.

There are also some local holidays in this region related to food. For example, in Salta they hold a festival dedicated to a locally grown bean similar to Edamame. During this holiday, the traditional foods of corn and beans are celebrated. Meals of all kinds are eaten, always with these two ingredients as a side dish, and even competitions of who can eat a set number of beans in the shortest period of time are held.

Mesopotamia

The humid and verdant area of north-east Argentina known as Mesopotamia, comprising the provinces of Chaco, Corrientes, Misiones and Formosa is another area heavily influenced by Native Americans, particularly by the Guaraní tribe. Abounding in rivers and shores, it offers a wide diversity of fish species, such as dorado, pacú, surubi, boga and silverside.

Widely grown in this area, cassava is typically included in the region's dishes, as are other components of meals, such as the chipá (cassava and cheese bread). However, in this area Cassava is cooked alone too, boiled or fried, often as a side dish for Asado and empanadas. As well, mbeyú, chipá avatí, sopa paraguaya, sopa correntina, chipa solo or chipá con carne, el quibebé, el borí borí, chipá guasú o pastel de choclo, mbaipy, chipá mbocá o chipá caburé and some other similar meals that have as basis:manioc, corn, cheese and, sometimes, some meat.. Chipá from Cassava is often eaten during breakfast with yerba mate, prepared with hot water, or with café con leche. Sopa Paraguaya and pastel/Carta de Choclo are eaten for lunch or dinner. As regards products made with sugar, Papaya (mamón in Argentine Spanish) jam is typical of the north of this region.

The principal product of this region is certainly yerba mate. Consumed countrywide, this product features a peculiarity of its own in this area: it is not only prepared with hot water but, driven by the region's high temperatures, it is common to see it prepared with cold water as well, in which case the beverage is known as tereré.

Patagonia
The large southern region of Patagonia is made up of the provinces Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut, Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego. This area also includes the Antarctica and Islas del Atlántico Sur. (or southern atlantic islands). Their most typical food ingredients include fish and seafood from the sea and rivers and the products of the sheep that are widely farmed there.

Marine species such as salmon, spider crabs, squid and other shellfish and molluscs may be caught in the Atlantic Ocean. There are trout in the rivers.

The many berries grown in the area include cherries, bilberries, strawberries, rosa mosqueta and elders, which are made into jams.

The Northern and Central European settlements in this region have built up large-scale production of chocolate and its by-products. Viennese and German cuisine and pastries are also typically associated with this region.

Mutton and lamb, together with wild boar and venison tend to make up the region's meat-based dishes. Also typical of the southern region are smoked products, including salmon, stag, wild boar, and pheasant.

Patagonia has been profoundly influenced by the tribes living there since long before Europeans arrived, in particular, the Mapuches and the Araucanos. A typical dish prepared by the latter is the curanto (a term meaning "hot stone"). Its preparation involves making a fire in a hole about 150 cm deep in the ground, and heating stones in it. A bed of nalca or maqui leaves is arranged on top of the stones, and ingredients are added in turn on top. Ingredients vary, but may include beef, lamb, pork, chicken, Argentine chorizos (pork sausages), potatoes, sweet potatoes, apples and holed squashes filled with cheese, cream and peas. The food is covered with leaves and damp pieces of cloth to keep the heat in, and covered with plenty of soil.

Alcoholic beverages
Though wine (vino) has traditionally been the most popular alcoholic beverage in Argentina, beer (cerveza; the Italian birra is frequently used) in recent decades has competed with wine in popularity. Breweries appeared in Argentina at the end of the 1860s, started by Alsatian colonists. The first were nearly all in the downtown of Buenos Aires (el égido de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), and soon Polish brewers began industrial production of beer: San Carlos in the province of Santa Fe, Río Segundo and Córdoba in the province of Córdoba, Quilmes and Llavallol on the outskirts of La Plata (in Buenos Aires Province), San Miguel de Tucumán in the province of Tucumán and on the outskirts of the cities of Mendoza and Salta.

The local consumption of beer has risen dramatically in the last generation: Argentines consumed 233 million litres in 1980 and 1.57 billion in 2007 (40 litres per capita). Outpacing that of wine since 2001, the growing production and consumption of beer have supported the existence of related events, for example, beer festivals called Oktoberfests or "Fiestas de la Cerveza" in locations that have a significant German population (Villa General Belgrano in Córdoba, San Carlos and Esperanza in the province of Santa Fe, etc.). Such celebrations copy, in an Argentine manner, Munich's Oktoberfest, and similarly are tourist attractions. However, the presence of a vigorous population of Celtic lineage, principally of Irish origin, has supported the creation of other celebrations of beer, often for marketing purposes, such as Saint Patrick's Day (Día de San Patricio), patron of Ireland, which is celebrated with abundant libations.

The consumption of alcoholic beverages in Argentina is similar to that of the United States and somewhat lower than the Western European average. Argentines enjoy a variety of alcoholic beverages and Argentina can boast a varied array of elaboraciones, whether industrial or artisanal. Besides beer and wine, Argentines frequently drink cider (here again, the heritage comes from Spain and Italy, more precisely from Asturias and Campania). Cider is the most popular beverage of the middle and lowers economic classes at Christmas and New Year (the upper classes proverbially preferring to celebrate with locally produced champagne, although real old-line "creole" aristocrats will still drink cider, which is much more traditional).

Other widely consumed spirits are aguardiente (firewater) made from sugar cane, known as caña quemada ("burnt cane") or, simply, 'caña ' ("cane"). A folkloric note about caña quemada: until 21 June it is traditional to drink caña quemada with ruda macho (a variant of common rue), it is supposed that this mixture prevents the flu and other illnesses. Caña competes, mainly in rural areas, with gin ("ginebra"—as in the Dutch kind of gin.)

The bitter spirit Fernet, and particularly the Italian brand Fernet-Branca, is highly popular in Argentina. (A study in 2017 found that Argentines consume more than 75% of all fernet produced globally.) Fernet is most commonly enjoyed as a mixed drink with Coca-Cola. Given Fernet's qualities as a digestive aid, it is a common choice for an after-dinner digestif.

There are many artisanally produced liqueurs (distilled, flavoured alcoholic beverages) in Argentina, for example, those flavoured with orange, egg, anise, coffee, cherry and, inevitably, dulce de leche. The Hesperidina is a type of liqueur made from orange peels, invented in Argentina around 1890. One may also encounter chitronchelo or (in Italian) citronella, based on lemon. This beverage arrived with immigrants from the Mezzogiorno and is produced both artisanally and industrially (for example, at Mar del Plata).

Non-alcoholic specialties
Argentines enjoy a wide variety of non-alcoholic infusions (although now and then both "families" are mixed; the yerbiao for example, is mate mixed with caña or gin). Among these, mate has long been the most widely enjoyed; in 2006, over 700,000 metric tons were harvested in Argentina, mostly for domestic consumption. Mate is also one of the top exports from Argentina, as it is valued all over the world.

The fact that mate is so prevalent in the Southern Cone, however, should not necessarily make visitors think that other infusions are rare in the region; in Argentina especially, given the strong European cultural imprint, the consumption of coffee is very common (141 cups per capita, annually). Chocolate infusions are also popular (the eating of chocolate is a Spanish influence, although the plant originated in Mesoamerica). This consumption grows during autumn and winter, or in the cold regions of the country; there are two dates where consumption of chocolate infusions is traditional in the primary educational centres: 25 May and 9 July, that is, the two national dates of Argentina.

English cultural influence (reinforced at the end of the 19th century and the beginnings of the 20th by British contacts with the Far East) has also made the consumption of tea very common.

Medicinal herbs are common in the whole country; among the most popular are: chamomile, lanceleaf, boldo, poleo, peperina, carqueja, thyme, canchalagua, rue (macho and hembra, that is, "male" and "female"), mallow, rosemary, passion flower, bira bira, palán palán, muña muña, to mention only the main ones. Many of these herbs are also used in apéritifs and bitters, whether alcoholic or not.

Popular short-order dishes
Common restoranes or restaurantes and rotiserias (grill restaurants) nearly anywhere in Argentina today serve (into the small hours) quickly prepared meals that in the course of the 20th century came to be known as minutas, "short-order dishes". Some of the dishes included in the category of minutas are milanesas, churrascos, bifes (beefsteaks), escalopes, tallarines, ravioles (ravioli), ñoquis (gnocchi), although some are very typical of locations that sell food: "bifes" and "milanesas" are served "a caballo" ("on horseback", with fried egg on top), "milanesa completa" (a milanesa with two fried eggs and French fries), "revuelto Gramajo", "colchón de arvejas" (an omelette made with peas), "suprema de pollo" (chicken supreme, usually breaded as a milanesa), matambres, "lengua a la vinagreta" (pickled tongue), and "sandwiches" (sandwiches de miga) are made with sliced white bread, rather than, say, rolls.

The most common sandwiches are those made of milanesa, baked ham and cheese, pan de miga, toast, pebetes, panchos (hot dogs), choripanes, morcipanes, etc.; from Montevideo comes a different species of sandwich called the chivito, even though it contains no goat meat.

Picadas, which are consumed at home or in bars, cafés, "cafetines" and "bodegones" are also popular; they consist of an ensemble of plates containing cubes of cheese (typically from Mar del Plata or Chubut), pieces of salame, olives in brine, french fries, maníes (peanuts), etc.; picadas are eaten accompanied by an alcoholic beverage ("fernet", beer, wine with soda, to give some common examples).

The people of Argentina greatly enjoy helado (ice creams of Italian lineage or sorbets Spanish lineage). In Spanish colonial times, a type of sorbet was made from hail or snow.

Eating habits
Breakfast typically is small and consists of coffee (or mate) and pastry. In most parts of Argentina, lunch is the largest meal of the day. Excluding the largest cities, such as Buenos Aires, Rosario or Cordoba, most towns close for lunchtime. This is when most people return home to enjoy a large meal and siesta. Traditional lunches in Argentina are long and well developed. Argentines often have a light evening snack (called a "merienda" – typically a coffee or mate and a pastry) and it is common to not eat dinner until 9 at night, or even later on weekends.

title: Argentine cuisine


text:
April 8

Pre-1600

 * 217 – Roman emperor Caracalla is assassinated and is succeeded by his Praetorian Guard prefect, Marcus Opellius Macrinus.
 * 876 – The Battle of Dayr al-'Aqul saves Baghdad from the Saffarids.
 * 1139 – Roger II of Sicily is excommunicated by Innocent II for supporting Anacletus II as pope for seven years, even though Roger had already publicly recognized Innocent's claim to the papacy.
 * 1232 – Mongol–Jin War: The Mongols begin their siege on Kaifeng, the capital of the Jin dynasty.
 * 1250 – Seventh Crusade: Ayyubids of Egypt capture King Louis IX of France in the Battle of Fariskur.
 * 1271 – In Syria, sultan Baibars conquers the Krak des Chevaliers.

1601–1900

 * 1605 – The city of Oulu, Finland, is founded by Charles IX of Sweden.
 * 1730 – Shearith Israel, the first synagogue in continental North America, is dedicated.
 * 1812 – Czar Alexander I, the Russian Emperor and the Grand Duke of Finland, officially announces the transfer of the status of the Finnish capital from Turku to Helsinki.
 * 1820 – The Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Milos.
 * 1832 – Black Hawk War: Around 300 United States 6th Infantry troops leave St. Louis, Missouri to fight the Sauk Native Americans.
 * 1866 – Austro-Prussian War: Italy and Prussia sign a secret alliance against the Austrian Empire.
 * 1886 – William Ewart Gladstone introduces the first Irish Home Rule Bill into the British House of Commons.
 * 1895 – In Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. the Supreme Court of the United States declares unapportioned income tax to be unconstitutional.

1901–present

 * 1904 – The French Third Republic and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland sign the Entente cordiale.
 * 1906 – Auguste Deter, the first person to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, dies.
 * 1908 – Harvard University votes to establish the Harvard Business School.
 * 1911 – Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovers superconductivity.
 * 1913 – The 17th Amendment to the United States Constitution, requiring direct election of Senators, becomes law.
 * 1918 – World War I: Actors Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin sell war bonds on the streets of New York City's financial district.
 * 1924 – Sharia courts are abolished in Turkey, as part of Atatürk's Reforms.
 * 1929 – Indian independence movement: At the Delhi Central Assembly, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt throw handouts and bombs to court arrest.
 * 1935 – The Works Progress Administration is formed when the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 becomes law.
 * 1940 – The Central Committee of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party elects Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal as General Secretary, marking the beginning of his 44-year-long tenure as de facto leader of Mongolia.
 * 1942 – World War II: The Japanese take Bataan in the Philippines.
 * 1943 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in an attempt to check inflation, freezes wages and prices, prohibits workers from changing jobs unless the war effort would be aided thereby, and bars rate increases by common carriers and public utilities.
 * 1943 – Otto and Elise Hampel are executed in Berlin for their anti-Nazi activities.
 * 1945 – World War II: After an air raid accidentally destroys a train carrying about 4,000 Nazi concentration camp internees in Prussian Hanover, the survivors are massacred by Nazis.
 * 1946 – Électricité de France, the world's largest utility company, is formed as a result of the nationalisation of a number of electricity producers, transporters and distributors.
 * 1950 – India and Pakistan sign the Liaquat–Nehru Pact.
 * 1952 – U.S. President Harry Truman calls for the seizure of all domestic steel mills in an attempt to prevent the 1952 steel strike.
 * 1953 – Mau Mau leader Jomo Kenyatta is convicted by British Kenya's rulers.
 * 1954 – A Royal Canadian Air Force Canadair Harvard collides with a Trans-Canada Airlines Canadair North Star over Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, killing 37 people.
 * 1954  – South African Airways Flight 201: A de Havilland DH.106 Comet 1 crashes into the sea during night killing 21 people.
 * 1959 – A team of computer manufacturers, users, and university people led by Grace Hopper meets to discuss the creation of a new programming language that would be called COBOL.
 * 1959  – The Organization of American States drafts an agreement to create the Inter-American Development Bank.
 * 1960 – The Netherlands and West Germany sign an agreement to negotiate the return of German land annexed by the Dutch in return for 280 million German marks as Wiedergutmachung.
 * 1968 – BOAC Flight 712 catches fire shortly after takeoff. As a result of her actions in the accident, Barbara Jane Harrison is awarded a posthumous George Cross, the only GC awarded to a woman in peacetime.
 * 1970 – Bahr El-Baqar primary school bombing: Israeli bombers strike an Egyptian school. Forty-six children are killed.
 * 1974 – Hank Aaron passes Babe Ruth as the all-time leader in career home runs by hitting his 715th home run off of Al Downing at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.
 * 1975 – Frank Robinson manages the Cleveland Indians in his first game as major league baseball's first African American manager.
 * 1987 – Los Angeles Dodgers executive Al Campanis resigns amid controversy over racist remarks he had made while on Nightline.
 * 1992 – Retired tennis great Arthur Ashe announces that he has AIDS, acquired from blood transfusions during one of his two heart surgeries.

 * 1993 – The Republic of North Macedonia joins the United Nations.
 * 1993  – The Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on mission STS-56.
 * 2002 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched on mission STS-110, carrying the S0 truss to the International Space Station. Astronaut Jerry L. Ross also becomes the first person to fly on seven spaceflights.
 * 2004 – War in Darfur: The Humanitarian Ceasefire Agreement is signed by the Sudanese government, the Justice and Equality Movement, and the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army.
 * 2005 – A solar eclipse occurs, visible over areas of the Pacific Ocean and Latin American countries such as Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and Venezuela.
 * 2006 – Shedden massacre: The bodies of eight men, all shot to death, are found in a field in Shedden, Elgin County, Ontario. The murders are soon linked to the Bandidos Motorcycle Club.
 * 2008 – The construction of the world's first skyscraper to integrate wind turbines is completed in Bahrain.
 * 2010 – U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sign the New START Treaty.
 * 2013 – The Islamic State of Iraq enters the Syrian Civil War and begins by declaring a merger with the Al-Nusra Front under the name Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham.
 * 2014 – Windows XP reaches its standard End Of Life and is no longer supported.
 * 2020 – Bernie Sanders ends his presidential campaign, leaving Joe Biden as the Democratic Party's nominee.
 * 2024 – Solar eclipse of April 8, 2024: A total solar eclipse takes place at the Moon's ascending node, visible across North America.

Pre-1600

 * 1320 – Peter I of Portugal (d. 1367)
 * 1408 – Jadwiga of Lithuania, Polish princess (d. 1431)
 * 1435 – John Clifford, 9th Baron de Clifford, English noble (d. 1461)
 * 1533 – Claudio Merulo, Italian organist and composer (d. 1604)
 * 1536 – Barbara of Hesse (d. 1597)
 * 1541 – Michele Mercati, Italian physician and archaeologist (d. 1593)
 * 1580 – William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, English noble, courtier and patron of the arts (d. 1630)
 * 1596 – Juan van der Hamen, Spanish artist (d. 1631)

1601–1900

 * 1605 – Philip IV of Spain (d. 1665)
 * 1605  – Mary Stuart, English-Scottish princess (d. 1607)
 * 1641 – Henry Sydney, 1st Earl of Romney, English general and politician, Secretary of State for the Northern Department (d. 1704)
 * 1692 – Giuseppe Tartini, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1770)
 * 1726 – Lewis Morris, American judge and politician (d. 1798)
 * 1732 – David Rittenhouse, American astronomer and mathematician (d. 1796)
 * 1761 – William Joseph Chaminade, French priest, founded the Society of Mary (d. 1850)
 * 1770 – John Thomas Campbell, Irish-Australian banker and politician (d. 1830)
 * 1798 – Dionysios Solomos, Greek poet and author (d. 1857)
 * 1818 – Christian IX of Denmark (d. 1906)
 * 1818  – August Wilhelm von Hofmann, German chemist and academic (d. 1892)
 * 1826 – Pancha Carrasco, Costa Rican soldier (d. 1890)
 * 1827 – Ramón Emeterio Betances, Puerto Rican ophthalmologist, journalist, and politician (d. 1898)
 * 1842 – Elizabeth Bacon Custer, American author and educator (d. 1933)
 * 1859 – Edmund Husserl, German Jewish-Austrian mathematician and philosopher (d. 1938)
 * 1864 – Carlos Deltour, French rower and rugby player (d. 1920)
 * 1867 – Allen Butler Talcott, American painter and educator (d. 1908)
 * 1869 – Harvey Cushing, American surgeon and academic (d. 1939)
 * 1871 – Clarence Hudson White, American photographer and educator (d. 1925)
 * 1874 – Manuel Díaz, Cuban fencer (d. 1929)
 * 1874  – Stanisław Taczak, Polish general (d. 1960)
 * 1875 – Albert I of Belgium (d. 1934)
 * 1882 (O.S. 27 March) – Dmytro Doroshenko, Lithuanian-Ukrainian historian and politician, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and Prime Minister of Ukraine (d. 1951)
 * 1883 – R. P. Keigwin, English cricketer and academic (d. 1972)
 * 1883  – Julius Seljamaa, Estonian journalist and politician, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Estonia (d. 1936)
 * 1885 – Dimitrios Levidis, Greek-French soldier, composer, and educator (d. 1951)
 * 1886 – Margaret Ayer Barnes, American author and playwright (d. 1967)
 * 1888 – Dennis Chávez, American journalist and politician (d. 1962)
 * 1889 – Adrian Boult, English conductor (d. 1983)
 * 1892 – Richard Neutra, Austrian-American architect, designer of the Los Angeles County Hall of Records (d. 1970)
 * 1892  – Mary Pickford, Canadian-American actress, producer, screenwriter and co-founder of United Artists (d. 1979)
 * 1896 – Yip Harburg, American composer (d. 1981)
 * 1900 – Marie Byles, Australian solicitor (d. 1979)

1901–present

 * 1902 – Andrew Irvine, English mountaineer and explorer (d. 1924)
 * 1902  – Maria Maksakova Sr., Russian soprano (d. 1974)
 * 1904 – John Hicks, English economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1989)
 * 1904  – Hirsch Jacobs, American horse trainer (d. 1970)
 * 1905 – Joachim Büchner, German sprinter and graphic designer (d. 1978)
 * 1905  – Helen Joseph, English-South African activist (d. 1992)
 * 1905  – Erwin Keller, German field hockey player (d. 1971)
 * 1906 – Raoul Jobin, Canadian tenor and educator (d. 1974)
 * 1908 – Hugo Fregonese, Argentinian director and screenwriter (d. 1987)
 * 1909 – John Fante, American author and screenwriter (d. 1983)
 * 1910 – George Musso, American football player and police officer (d. 2000)
 * 1911 – Melvin Calvin, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1997)
 * 1911  – Emil Cioran, Romanian-French philosopher and academic (d. 1995)
 * 1912 – Alois Brunner, Austrian-German SS officer (d. 2001 or 2010)
 * 1912  – Sonja Henie, Norwegian-American figure skater and actress (d. 1969)
 * 1914 – María Félix, Yaqui/Basque-Mexican actress (d. 2002)
 * 1915 – Ivan Supek, Croatian physicist, philosopher and writer (d. 2007)
 * 1917 – Winifred Asprey, American mathematician and computer scientist (d. 2007)
 * 1917  – Lloyd Bott, Australian public servant (d. 2004)
 * 1917  – Hubertus Ernst, Dutch bishop (d. 2017)
 * 1917  – Grigori Kuzmin, Russian-Estonian astronomer (d. 1988)
 * 1918 – Betty Ford, American wife of Gerald Ford, 40th First Lady of the United States (d. 2011)
 * 1918  – Glendon Swarthout, American author and academic (d. 1992)
 * 1919 – Ian Smith, Zimbabwean lieutenant and politician, 1st Prime Minister of Rhodesia (d. 2007)
 * 1921 – Franco Corelli, Italian tenor and actor (d. 2003)
 * 1920 – Carmen McRae, American singer-songwriter, pianist, and actress (d. 1994)
 * 1921  – Jan Novák, Czech composer (d. 1984)
 * 1921  – Herman van Raalte, Dutch footballer (d. 2013)
 * 1923 – George Fisher, American cartoonist (d. 2003)
 * 1923  – Edward Mulhare, Irish-American actor (d. 1997)
 * 1924 – Frédéric Back, German-Canadian animator, director, and screenwriter (d. 2013)
 * 1924  – Anthony Farrar-Hockley, English general and historian (d. 2006)
 * 1924  – Kumar Gandharva, Hindustani classical singer (d. 1992)
 * 1924  – Sara Northrup Hollister, American occultist (d. 1997)
 * 1926 – Henry N. Cobb, American architect and academic, co-founded Pei Cobb Freed & Partners (d. 2020)
 * 1926  – Shecky Greene, American comedian (d. 2023)
 * 1926  – Jürgen Moltmann, German theologian and academic (d. 2024)
 * 1927 – Tilly Armstrong, English author (d. 2010)
 * 1927  – Ollie Mitchell, American trumpet player and bandleader (d. 2013)
 * 1928 – Fred Ebb, American lyricist (d. 2004)
 * 1929 – Jacques Brel, Belgian singer-songwriter and actor (d. 1978)
 * 1929  – Renzo De Felice, Italian historian and author (d. 1996)
 * 1930 – Carlos Hugo, Duke of Parma (d. 2010)
 * 1931 – John Gavin, American actor and diplomat, United States Ambassador to Mexico (d. 2018)
 * 1931 – Jack Le Goff, French equestrian (d. 2009)
 * 1932 – Iskandar of Johor (d. 2010)
 * 1933  – James Lockhart, American scholar of colonial Latin America, especially Nahua peoples (d. 2014)
 * 1934 – Kisho Kurokawa, Japanese architect, designed the Nakagin Capsule Tower and Singapore Flyer (d. 2007)
 * 1935 – Oscar Zeta Acosta, American lawyer and politician (d. 1974)
 * 1935  – Albert Bustamante, American soldier, educator, and politician (d. 2021)
 * 1937 – Tony Barton, English footballer and manager (d. 1993)
 * 1937  – Seymour Hersh, American journalist and author
 * 1937  – Momo Kapor, Serbian author and painter (d. 2010)
 * 1938 – Kofi Annan, Ghanaian economist and diplomat, 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations (d. 2018)
 * 1938  – John Hamm, Canadian physician and politician, 25th Premier of Nova Scotia
 * 1938  – Mary W. Gray, American mathematician, statistician, and lawyer
 * 1939 – Manolis Angelopoulos, Greek singer, composer and songwriter (d. 1989)
 * 1939  – John Arbuthnott, Scottish microbiologist and academic (d. 2023)
 * 1939  – Trina Schart Hyman, American author and illustrator (d. 2004)
 * 1939  – Martin J. Schreiber, American politician, 39th Governor of Wisconsin
 * 1940 – John Havlicek, American basketball player (d. 2019)
 * 1941 – Vivienne Westwood, English fashion designer (d. 2022)
 * 1942 – Tony Banks, Baron Stratford, Northern Irish politician, Minister for Sport and the Olympics (d. 2006)
 * 1942  – Roger Chapman, English singer-songwriter and guitarist
 * 1942  – Douglas Trumbull, American director, producer, and special effects artist (d. 2022)
 * 1943 – Michael Bennett, American dancer, choreographer, and director (d. 1987)
 * 1943  – Miller Farr, American football player (d. 2023)
 * 1943  – James Herbert, English author and illustrator (d. 2013)
 * 1943  – Chris Orr, English painter and illustrator
 * 1944 – Hywel Bennett, Welsh actor (d. 2017)
 * 1944  – Odd Nerdrum, Swedish-Norwegian painter and illustrator
 * 1945 – Derrick Walker, Scottish businessman
 * 1945  – Jang Yong, South Korean actor
 * 1946 – Catfish Hunter, American baseball player (d. 1999)
 * 1946  – Tim Thomerson, American actor and producer
 * 1947 – Tom DeLay, American lawyer and politician
 * 1947  – Steve Howe, English guitarist, songwriter, and producer
 * 1947  – Pascal Lamy, French businessman and politician, European Commissioner for Trade
 * 1947  – Larry Norman, American singer-songwriter, and producer (d. 2008)
 * 1948 – Barbara Young, Baroness Young of Old Scone, Scottish academic and politician
 * 1949 – K. C. Kamalasabayson, Sri Lankan lawyer and politician, 39th Attorney General of Sri Lanka (d. 2007)
 * 1949  – John Madden, English director and producer
 * 1949  – Brenda Russell, African-American-Canadian singer-songwriter and keyboard player
 * 1949  – John Scott, English sociologist and academic
 * 1950 – Grzegorz Lato, Polish footballer and coach
 * 1951 – Gerd Andres, German politician
 * 1951  – Geir Haarde, Icelandic economist, journalist, and politician, 23rd Prime Minister of Iceland
 * 1951  – Mel Schacher, American bass player
 * 1951  – Joan Sebastian, Mexican singer-songwriter and actor (d. 2015)
 * 1951  – Phil Schaap, American jazz disc jockey and historian (d. 2021)
 * 1952 – Ahmet Piriştina, Turkish politician (d. 2004)
 * 1954 – Gary Carter, American baseball player and coach (d. 2012)
 * 1954  – Princess Lalla Amina of Morocco (d. 2012)
 * 1954  – G.V. Loganathan, Indian-American engineer and academic (d. 2007)
 * 1955 – Gerrie Coetzee, South African boxer (d. 2023)
 * 1955  – Ron Johnson, American businessman and politician
 * 1955  – Barbara Kingsolver, American novelist, essayist and poet
 * 1955  – David Wu, Taiwanese-American lawyer and politician
 * 1956 – Michael Benton, Scottish-English paleontologist and academic
 * 1956  – Christine Boisson, French actress
 * 1956  – Roman Dragoun, Czech singer-songwriter and keyboard player
 * 1958 – Detlef Bruckhoff, German footballer
 * 1958  – Tom Petranoff, American javelin thrower and coach
 * 1959 – Alain Bondue, French cyclist
 * 1960 – John Schneider, American actor and country singer
 * 1961 – Richard Hatch, American reality contestant
 * 1961  – Brian McDermott, English footballer and manager
 * 1962 – Paddy Lowe, English engineer
 * 1962  – Izzy Stradlin, American guitarist and songwriter
 * 1963 – Tine Asmundsen, Norwegian bassist
 * 1963  – Julian Lennon, English singer-songwriter
 * 1963  – Dean Norris, American actor
 * 1963  – Terry Porter, American basketball player and coach
 * 1963  – Donita Sparks, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
 * 1963  – Alec Stewart, English cricketer
 * 1963  – Seth Tobias, American businessman (d. 2007)
 * 1964 – Biz Markie, American rapper, producer, and actor (d. 2021)
 * 1964  – John McGinlay, Scottish footballer and manager
 * 1965 – Steven Blaney, Canadian businessman and politician, 5th Canadian Minister of Public Safety
 * 1965  – Michael Jones, New Zealand rugby player and coach
 * 1966 – Iveta Bartošová, Czech singer and actress (d. 2014)
 * 1966  – Mark Blundell, English race car driver
 * 1966  – Andy Currier, English rugby league player
 * 1966  – Charlotte Dawson, New Zealand-Australian television host (d. 2014)
 * 1966  – Dalton Grant, English high jumper
 * 1966  – Mazinho, Brazilian footballer, coach, and manager
 * 1966  – Harri Rovanperä, Finnish race car driver
 * 1966  – Evripidis Stylianidis, Greek lawyer and politician, Greek Minister for the Interior
 * 1966  – Robin Wright, American actress, director, producer
 * 1967 – Kenny Benjamin, Antiguan cricketer
 * 1968 – Patricia Arquette, American actress and director
 * 1968  – Patricia Girard, French runner and hurdler
 * 1968  – Tracy Grammer, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
 * 1971 – Darren Jessee, American singer-songwriter and drummer
 * 1972 – Paul Gray, American bass player and songwriter (d. 2010)
 * 1972  – Sergei Magnitsky, Russian lawyer and accountant (d. 2009)
 * 1973 – Khaled Badra, Tunisian footballer
 * 1973  – Emma Caulfield, American actress
 * 1974 – Toutai Kefu, Tongan-Australian rugby player
 * 1974  – Chris Kyle, American sniper and memoirist (d. 2013)
 * 1974  – Nnedi Okorafor, Nigerian-American author and educator
 * 1974  – Nayden Todorov, Bulgarian conductor and culture minister
 * 1975 – Anouk, Dutch singer
 * 1975  – Francesco Flachi, Italian footballer
 * 1975  – Timo Pérez, Dominican-American baseball player
 * 1975  – Funda Arar, Turkish singer
 * 1977 – Ana de la Reguera, Mexican actress
 * 1977  – Mehran Ghassemi, Iranian journalist and author (d. 2008)
 * 1977  – Mark Spencer, American computer programmer and engineer
 * 1978 – Daigo, Japanese singer-songwriter, actor, and voice actor
 * 1978  – Bernt Haas, Austrian-Swiss footballer
 * 1978  – Rachel Roberts, Canadian model and actress
 * 1978  – Jocelyn Robichaud, Canadian tennis player and coach
 * 1978  – Evans Rutto, Kenyan runner
 * 1979 – Alexi Laiho, Finnish singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2020)
 * 1979  – Amit Trivedi, Indian singer-songwriter
 * 1980 – Manuel Ortega, Austrian singer
 * 1980  – Katee Sackhoff, American actress
 * 1980  – Mariko Seyama, Japanese announcer, photographer, and model
 * 1981 – Frédérick Bousquet, French swimmer
 * 1981  – Taylor Kitsch, Canadian actor and model
 * 1981  – Ofer Shechter, Israeli model, actor, and screenwriter
 * 1982 – Gennady Golovkin, Kazakhstani boxer
 * 1982  – Brett White, Australian rugby league player
 * 1982 – Allu Arjun, Indian actor
 * 1983 – Tatyana Petrova Arkhipova, Russian runner
 * 1984 – Michelle Donelan, British politician
 * 1984  – Ezra Koenig, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
 * 1984  – Pablo Portillo, Mexican singer and actor
 * 1984  – Taran Noah Smith, American actor
 * 1985 – Patrick Schliwa, German rugby player
 * 1985  – Yemane Tsegay, Ethiopian runner
 * 1986 – Igor Akinfeev, Russian footballer
 * 1986  – Félix Hernández, Venezuelan baseball player
 * 1986  – Carlos Santana, Dominican baseball player
 * 1987 – Royston Drenthe, Dutch footballer
 * 1987  – Jeremy Hellickson, American baseball player
 * 1987  – Elton John, Trinidadian footballer
 * 1987  – Sam Rapira, New Zealand rugby league player
 * 1988 – Jenni Asserholt, Swedish ice hockey player
 * 1989 – Matty Healy, English singer-songwriter and producer
 * 1990 – Kim Jong-hyun, South Korean singer (d. 2017)
 * 1992 – Jeff McNeil, American baseball player
 * 1993 – Viktor Arvidsson, Swedish ice hockey player
 * 1993 – TBJZL, English YouTuber
 * 1994 – Josh Chudleigh, Australian rugby league player
 * 1995 – Cedi Osman, Turkish professional basketball player
 * 1996 – Anna Korakaki, Greek Olympic shooter
 * 1997 – Kim Woo-jin, South Korean singer
 * 1997  – Saygrace, Australian singer and songwriter
 * 1997  – Roquan Smith, American football player
 * 1997  – Arno Verschueren, Belgian footballer
 * 1998 – Lavinia Valbonesi, Ecuadorian nutritionist, businesswoman and First Lady of Ecuador
 * 1999 – CeeDee Lamb, American football player
 * 2002 – Jamie Drysdale, Canadian ice hockey player
 * 2002  – Viktória Forster, Slovak track and field athlete
 * 2002  – Skai Jackson, American actress

Pre-1600

 * 217 – Caracalla, Roman emperor (b. 188)
 * 622 – Shōtoku, Japanese prince (b. 572)
 * 632 – Charibert II, Frankish king (b. 607)
 * 894 – Adalelm, Frankish nobleman
 * 944 – Wang Yanxi, Chinese emperor
 * 956 – Gilbert, Frankish nobleman
 * 967 – Mu'izz al-Dawla, Buyid emir (b. 915)
 * 1143 – John II Komnenos, Byzantine emperor (b. 1087)
 * 1150 – Gertrude of Babenberg, duchess of Bohemia (b. 1118)
 * 1321 – Thomas of Tolentino, Italian-Franciscan missionary (b. c. 1255)
 * 1338 – Stephen Gravesend, bishop of London
 * 1364 – John II, French king (b. 1319)
 * 1450 – Sejong the Great, Korean king (b. 1397)
 * 1461 – Georg von Peuerbach, German mathematician and astronomer (b. 1423)
 * 1492 – Lorenzo de' Medici, Italian ruler (b. 1449)
 * 1551 – Oda Nobuhide, Japanese warlord (b. 1510)
 * 1586 – Martin Chemnitz, Lutheran theologian and reformer (b. 1522)

1601–1900

 * 1608 – Magdalen Dacre, English noble (b. 1538)
 * 1612 – Anne Catherine of Brandenburg (b. 1575)
 * 1691 – Carlo Rainaldi, Italian architect, designed the Santa Maria dei Miracoli and Santa Maria in Montesanto (b. 1611)
 * 1697 – Niels Juel, Norwegian-Danish admiral (b. 1629)
 * 1704 – Hiob Ludolf, German orientalist and philologist (b. 1624)
 * 1704  – Henry Sydney, 1st Earl of Romney, English colonel and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (b. 1641)
 * 1709 – Wolfgang Dietrich of Castell-Remlingen, German nobleman (b. 1641)
 * 1725 – John Wise, American minister (b. 1652)
 * 1735 – Francis II Rákóczi, Hungarian prince (b. 1676)
 * 1848 – Gaetano Donizetti, Italian composer (b. 1797)
 * 1860 – István Széchenyi, Hungarian statesman and reformer (b. 1791)
 * 1861 – Elisha Otis, American businessman, founded the Otis Elevator Company (b. 1811)
 * 1870 – Charles Auguste de Bériot, Belgian violinist and composer (b. 1802)
 * 1877 – Bernardino António Gomes, Portuguese physician and naturalist (b. 1806)
 * 1894 – Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Indian journalist, author, and poet (b. 1838)

1901–present

 * 1906 – Auguste Deter, German woman, first person diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (b. 1850)
 * 1919 – Loránd Eötvös, Hungarian physicist, academic, and politician, Hungarian Minister of Education (b. 1848)
 * 1920 – Charles Griffes, American pianist and composer (b. 1884)
 * 1931 – Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Swedish poet Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1864)
 * 1936 – Róbert Bárány, Austrian physician and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1876)
 * 1936  – Božena Benešová, Czech poet and novelist (b. 1873)
 * 1941 – Marcel Prévost, French novelist and playwright (b. 1862)
 * 1942 – Kostas Skarvelis, Greek guitarist and composer (b. 1880)
 * 1947 – Olaf Frydenlund, Norwegian target shooter (b. 1862)
 * 1950 – Vaslav Nijinsky, Polish dancer and choreographer (b. 1890)
 * 1959 – Marios Makrionitis, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Athens (b. 1913)
 * 1961 – Joseph Carrodus, Australian public servant (b. 1885)
 * 1962 – Juan Belmonte, Spanish bullfighter (b. 1892)
 * 1965 – Lars Hanson, Swedish actor (b. 1886)
 * 1969 – Zinaida Aksentyeva, Ukrainian astronomer (b. 1900)
 * 1973 – Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter and sculptor (b. 1881)
 * 1974 – James Charles McGuigan, Canadian cardinal (b. 1894)
 * 1979 – Breece D'J Pancake, American short story writer (b. 1952)
 * 1981 – Omar Bradley, American general (b. 1893)
 * 1983 – Isamu Kosugi, Japanese actor and director (b. 1904)
 * 1984 – Pyotr Kapitsa, Russian physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1894)
 * 1985 – John Frederick Coots, American pianist and composer (b. 1897)
 * 1990 – Ryan White, American activist, inspired the Ryan White Care Act (b. 1971)
 * 1991 – Per Ohlin, Swedish musician (b. 1969)
 * 1992 – Daniel Bovet, Swiss-Italian pharmacologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1907)
 * 1993 – Marian Anderson, American operatic singer (b. 1897)
 * 1994 – François Rozet, French-Canadian actor (b. 1899)
 * 1996 – Ben Johnson, American actor and stuntman (b. 1918)
 * 1996  – León Klimovsky, Argentinian-Spanish actor, director, and screenwriter (b. 1906)
 * 1996  – Mick Young, Australian politician (b. 1936)
 * 1997 – Laura Nyro, American singer-songwriter and pianist (b. 1947)
 * 2000 – František Šťastný, Czech motorcycle racer (b. 1927)
 * 2000  – Claire Trevor, American actress (b. 1910)
 * 2002 – María Félix, Mexican actress (b. 1914)
 * 2002  – Harvey Quaytman, American painter (b. 1937)
 * 2004 – Werner Schumacher, German actor (b. 1921)
 * 2005 – Onna White, Canadian choreographer and dancer (b. 1922)
 * 2006 – Gerard Reve, Dutch author and poet (b. 1923)
 * 2007 – Sol LeWitt, American painter and sculptor (b. 1928)
 * 2008 – Kazuo Shiraga, Japanese painter (b. 1924)
 * 2009 – Richard de Mille, American Scientologist, author, investigative journalist, and psychologist (b. 1922)
 * 2009  – Piotr Morawski, Polish mountaineer (b. 1976)
 * 2010 – Malcolm McLaren, English singer-songwriter (b. 1946)
 * 2010  – Teddy Scholten, Dutch singer (b. 1926)
 * 2011 – Hedda Sterne, Romanian-American painter and photographer (b. 1910)
 * 2012 – Blair Kiel, American football player and coach (b. 1961)
 * 2012  – Jack Tramiel, Polish-American businessman, founded Commodore International (b. 1928)
 * 2012  – Janusz K. Zawodny, Polish-American soldier, historian, and political scientist (b. 1921)
 * 2013 – Mikhail Beketov, Russian journalist (b. 1958)
 * 2013  – Annette Funicello, American actress and singer (b. 1942)
 * 2013  – Sara Montiel, Spanish-Mexican actress and singer (b. 1928)
 * 2013  – José Luis Sampedro, Spanish economist and author (b. 1917)
 * 2013  – Margaret Thatcher, English politician, first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1925)
 * 2014 – Emmanuel III Delly, Iraqi patriarch (b. 1927)
 * 2014  – Karlheinz Deschner, German author and activist (b. 1924)
 * 2014  – Ivan Mercep, New Zealand architect, designed the Te Papa Tongarewa Museum (b. 1930)
 * 2015 – Jayakanthan, Indian journalist and author (b. 1934)
 * 2015  – Rayson Huang, Hong Kong chemist and academic (b. 1920)
 * 2015  – Sergei Lashchenko, Ukrainian kick-boxer (b. 1987)
 * 2015  – David Laventhol, American journalist and publisher (b. 1933)
 * 2015  – Jean-Claude Turcotte, Canadian cardinal (b. 1936)
 * 2019 – Josine Ianco-Starrels, Romanian-born American art curator (b. 1926)
 * 2020 – Rick May, American-Canadian voice actor (b. 1940)
 * 2020  – Abdul Momin Imambari, Bangladeshi Islamic scholar (b. 1930)
 * 2022 – Mimi Reinhardt, Jewish Austrian secretary (b. 1915)
 * 2024 – Keith Barnes, Welsh-Australian rugby league player and coach (b. 1934)
 * 2024 – Peter Higgs, British physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1929)
 * 2024 – Ralph Puckett, American Army officer, Medal of Honor recipient (b. 1926)

Holidays and observances

 * Buddha's Birthday, also known as Hana Matsuri, "Flower Festival" (Japan)
 * Christian feast day:
 * Anne Ayres (Episcopal Church (USA))
 * Constantina
 * Julie Billiart of Namur
 * Perpetuus
 * Walter of Pontoise
 * William Augustus Muhlenberg (Episcopal Church (USA))
 * April 8 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
 * Earliest day on which Fast and Prayer Day can fall, while April 14 is the latest; celebrated on the second Friday in April (Liberia)
 * International Romani Day

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: April 8


text:
Ad hominem

, short for argumentum ad hominem, refers to several types of arguments that are fallacious. Often nowadays this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself. This avoids genuine debate by creating a personal attack as a diversion often using a totally irrelevant, but often highly charged attribute of the opponent's character or background. The most common form of this fallacy is "A" makes a claim of "fact," to which "B" asserts that "A" has a personal trait, quality or physical attribute that is repugnant thereby going entirely off-topic, and hence "B" concludes that "A" has their "fact" wrong - without ever addressing the point of the debate. Many contemporary politicians routinely use ad hominem attacks, which can be encapsulated to a derogatory nickname for a political opponent.

Other uses of the term ad hominem are more traditional, referring to arguments tailored to fit a particular audience, and may be encountered in specialized philosophical usage. These typically refer to the dialectical strategy of using the target's own beliefs and arguments against them, while not agreeing with the validity of those beliefs and arguments. Ad hominem arguments were first studied in ancient Greece; John Locke revived the examination of ad hominem arguments in the 17th century.

History

The various types of ad hominem arguments have been known in the West since at least the ancient Greeks. Aristotle, in his work Sophistical Refutations, detailed the fallaciousness of putting the questioner but not the argument under scrutiny. His description was somewhat different from the modern understanding, referring to a class of sophistry that applies an ambiguously worded question about people to a specific person. The proper refutation, he wrote, is not to debate the attributes of the person (solutio ad hominem) but to address the original ambiguity. Many examples of ancient non-fallacious ad hominem arguments are preserved in the works of the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus. In these arguments, the concepts and assumptions of the opponents are used as part of a dialectical strategy against them to demonstrate the unsoundness of their own arguments and assumptions. In this way, the arguments are to the person (ad hominem), but without attacking the properties of the individuals making the arguments. This kind of argument is also known as "argument from commitment".

Italian Galileo Galilei and British philosopher John Locke also examined the argument from commitment, a form of the ad hominem argument, meaning examining an argument on the basis of whether it stands true to the principles of the person carrying the argument. In the mid-19th century, the modern understanding of the term ad hominem started to take shape, with the broad definition given by English logician Richard Whately. According to Whately, ad hominem arguments were "addressed to the peculiar circumstances, character, avowed opinions, or past conduct of the individual".

Over time, the term acquired a different meaning; by the beginning of the 20th century, it was linked to a logical fallacy, in which a debater, instead of disproving an argument, attacked their opponent. This approach was also popularized in philosophical textbooks of the mid-20th century, and it was challenged by Australian philosopher Charles Leonard Hamblin in the second half of the 20th century. In a detailed work, he suggested that the inclusion of a statement against a person in an argument does not necessarily make it a fallacious argument since that particular phrase is not a premise that leads to a conclusion. While Hablin's criticism was not widely accepted, Canadian philosopher Douglas N. Walton examined the fallaciousness of the ad hominem argument even further. Nowadays, except within specialized philosophical usages, the usage of the term ad hominem signifies a straight attack at the character and ethos of a person, in an attempt to refute their argument.

Terminology
The Latin phrase argumentum ad hominem stands for "argument against the person". "Ad" corresponds to "against" but it could also mean "to" or "towards".

The terms ad mulierem and ad feminam have been used specifically when the person receiving the criticism is female but the term hominem (accusative of homo) was gender-neutral in Latin.

Types of ad hominem arguments
Fallacious ad hominem reasoning is categorized among informal fallacies, more precisely as a genetic fallacy, a subcategory of fallacies of irrelevance.

Ad hominem fallacies can be separated into various types, such as tu quoque, circumstantial ad hominem, guilt by association, and abusive ad hominem. All of them are similar to the general scheme of ad hominem argument, that is instead of dealing with the essence of someone's argument or trying to refute it, the interlocutor is attacking the character of the proponent of the argument and concluding that it is a sufficient reason to drop the initial argument.

Tu quoque
Ad hominem tu quoque (literally: "You also") is a response to a personal attack (or ad hominem argument) that itself is a personal attack.

Tu quoque appears as:

 * A makes a claim a.
 * B attacks the character of A by saying they hold a property x, which is bad.
 * A defends themself by attacking B, saying they also hold the same property x.

Here is an example given by philosophy professor George Wrisley to illustrate the above: A businessman and a politician are giving a lecture at a university about how good his company is and how nicely the system works. A student asks him "Is it true that you and your company are selling weapons to third world rulers who use those arms against their own people?" and the businessman replies "Is it true that your university gets funding by the same company that you are claiming is selling guns to those countries? You are not a white dove either". The student's ad hominem accusation is not fallacious, as it is relevant to the narrative the businessman is trying to project. On the other hand, the businessman's attack on the student (that is, the student being inconsistent) is irrelevant to the opening narrative. So the businessman's tu quoque response is fallacious.

Canadian philosopher Christopher Tindale approaches somewhat different the tu quoque fallacy. According to Tindale, a tu quoque fallacy appears when a response to an argument is made on the history of the arguer. This argument is also invalid because it does not disprove the premise; if the premise is true, then source A may be a hypocrite or even changed their mind, but this does not make the statement less credible from a logical perspective. A common example, given by Tindale, is when a doctor advises a patient to lose weight, but the patient argues that there is no need for him to go on a diet because the doctor is also overweight.

Circumstantial
Circumstantial ad hominem points out that someone is in circumstances (for instance, their job, wealth, property, or relations) such that they are disposed to take a particular position. It constitutes an attack on the bias of a source. As with other types of ad hominem attack, circumstantial attack could be fallacious or not. It could be fallacious because a disposition to make a certain argument does not make the argument invalid; this overlaps with the genetic fallacy (an argument that a claim is incorrect due to its source). But it also may be a sound argument, if the premises are correct and the bias is relevant to the argument.

A simple example is: a father may tell his daughter not to start smoking because she will damage her health, and she may point out that he is or was a smoker. This does not alter the fact that smoking might cause various diseases. Her father's inconsistency is not a proper reason to reject his claim.

Philosopher and pundit on informal fallacies Douglas N. Walton argues that a circumstantial ad hominem argument can be non-fallacious. This could be the case when someone (A) attacks the personality of another person (B), making an argument (a) while the personality of B is relevant to argument a, i.e. B talks as an authority figure. To illustrate this reasoning, Walton gives the example of a witness at a trial: if he had been caught lying and cheating in his own life, should the jury take his word for granted? No, according to Walton.

Guilt by association
Guilt by association, that is accusing an arguer because of his alleged connection with a discredited person or group, can sometimes also be a type of ad hominem fallacy when the argument attacks a source because of the similarity between the views of someone making an argument and other proponents of the argument.

This form of the argument is as follows:

 * 1) Individual S makes claim C.
 * 2) Individual S is also associated with Group G, who has an unfavorable reputation
 * 3) Therefore, individual S and his views are questionable.

Academic Leigh Kolb gives as an example that the 2008 US vice‐presidential candidate Sarah Palin attacked Barack Obama for having worked with Bill Ayers, who had been a leader in the Weather Underground terrorist group in the 1960s. Despite Obama denouncing every act of terrorism, he was still associated by his opponents with terrorism.

Guilt by association is frequently found in social and political debates. It also appears after major events (such as scandals and terrorism) linked to a specific group. An example, given also by Leigh Kolb, is the peak of attacks against Muslims in the US after the September 11 attacks.

Abusive ad hominem

Abusive ad hominem argument (or direct ad hominem) is associated with an attack to the character of the person carrying an argument. This kind of argument, besides usually being fallacious, is also counterproductive, as a proper dialogue is hard to achieve after such an attack.

Key issues in examining an argument to determine whether it is an ad hominem fallacy or not are whether the accusation against the person stands true or not, and whether the accusation is relevant to the argument. An example is a dialogue at the court, where the attorney cross-examines an eyewitness, bringing to light the fact that the witness was convicted in the past for lying. If the attorney's conclusion is that the witness is lying, that would be wrong. But if his argument would be that the witness should not be trusted, that would not be a fallacy.

Argument from commitment
An ad hominem argument from commitment is a type of valid argument that employs, as a dialectical strategy, the exclusive use of the beliefs, convictions, and assumptions of those holding the position being argued against, i.e., arguments constructed on the basis of what other people hold to be true. This usage is generally only encountered in specialist philosophical usage or in pre-20th century usages. This type of argument is also known as the ex concessis argument (Latin for "from what has been conceded already").

Usage in debates
Ad hominem fallacies are considered to be uncivil and do not help creating a constructive atmosphere for dialogue to flourish. An ad hominem attack is an attack on the character of the target who tends to feel the necessity to defend himself or herself from the accusation of being hypocritical. Walton has noted that it is so powerful of an argument that it is employed in many political debates. Since it is associated with negativity and dirty tricks, it has gained a bad fame, of being always fallacious.

Author Eithan Orkibi, having studied Israeli politics prior to elections, described two other forms of ad hominem attacks that are common during election periods. They both depend on the collective memory shared by both proponents and the audience. The first is the precedent ad hominem, according to which the previous history of someone means that they do not fit for the office. It goes like this: "My opponent was (allegedly) wrong in the past, therefore he is wrong now". The second one is a behavioral ad hominem: "my opponent was not decent in his arguments in the past, so he is not now either". These kinds of attacks are based on the inability of the audience to have a clear view of the amount of false statements by both parts of the debate.

Criticism as a fallacy
Walton has argued that ad hominem reasoning is not always fallacious, and that in some instances, questions of personal conduct, character, motives, etc., are legitimate and relevant to the issue, as when it directly involves hypocrisy, or actions contradicting the subject's words.

The philosopher Charles Taylor has argued that ad hominem reasoning (discussing facts about the speaker or author relative to the value of his statements) is essential to understanding certain moral issues due to the connection between individual persons and morality (or moral claims), and contrasts this sort of reasoning with the apodictic reasoning (involving facts beyond dispute or clearly established) of philosophical naturalism.

title: Ad hominem


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Analysis of algorithms

In computer science, the analysis of algorithms is the process of finding the computational complexity of algorithms—the amount of time, storage, or other resources needed to execute them. Usually, this involves determining a function that relates the size of an algorithm's input to the number of steps it takes (its time complexity) or the number of storage locations it uses (its space complexity). An algorithm is said to be efficient when this function's values are small, or grow slowly compared to a growth in the size of the input. Different inputs of the same size may cause the algorithm to have different behavior, so best, worst and average case descriptions might all be of practical interest. When not otherwise specified, the function describing the performance of an algorithm is usually an upper bound, determined from the worst case inputs to the algorithm.

The term "analysis of algorithms" was coined by Donald Knuth. Algorithm analysis is an important part of a broader computational complexity theory, which provides theoretical estimates for the resources needed by any algorithm which solves a given computational problem. These estimates provide an insight into reasonable directions of search for efficient algorithms.

In theoretical analysis of algorithms it is common to estimate their complexity in the asymptotic sense, i.e., to estimate the complexity function for arbitrarily large input. Big O notation, Big-omega notation and Big-theta notation are used to this end. For instance, binary search is said to run in a number of steps proportional to the logarithm of the size $n$ of the sorted list being searched, or in $log_{2} n$, colloquially "in logarithmic time". Usually asymptotic estimates are used because different implementations of the same algorithm may differ in efficiency. However the efficiencies of any two "reasonable" implementations of a given algorithm are related by a constant multiplicative factor called a hidden constant.

Exact (not asymptotic) measures of efficiency can sometimes be computed but they usually require certain assumptions concerning the particular implementation of the algorithm, called model of computation. A model of computation may be defined in terms of an abstract computer, e.g. Turing machine, and/or by postulating that certain operations are executed in unit time. For example, if the sorted list to which we apply binary search has $n$ elements, and we can guarantee that each lookup of an element in the list can be done in unit time, then at most $O(log n)$ time units are needed to return an answer.

Cost models
Time efficiency estimates depend on what we define to be a step. For the analysis to correspond usefully to the actual run-time, the time required to perform a step must be guaranteed to be bounded above by a constant. One must be careful here; for instance, some analyses count an addition of two numbers as one step. This assumption may not be warranted in certain contexts. For example, if the numbers involved in a computation may be arbitrarily large, the time required by a single addition can no longer be assumed to be constant.

Two cost models are generally used:
 * the uniform cost model, also called unit-cost model (and similar variations), assigns a constant cost to every machine operation, regardless of the size of the numbers involved
 * the logarithmic cost model, also called logarithmic-cost measurement (and similar variations), assigns a cost to every machine operation proportional to the number of bits involved

The latter is more cumbersome to use, so it is only employed when necessary, for example in the analysis of arbitrary-precision arithmetic algorithms, like those used in cryptography.

A key point which is often overlooked is that published lower bounds for problems are often given for a model of computation that is more restricted than the set of operations that you could use in practice and therefore there are algorithms that are faster than what would naively be thought possible.

Run-time analysis
Run-time analysis is a theoretical classification that estimates and anticipates the increase in running time (or run-time or execution time) of an algorithm as its input size (usually denoted as $N$) increases. Run-time efficiency is a topic of great interest in computer science: A program can take seconds, hours, or even years to finish executing, depending on which algorithm it implements. While software profiling techniques can be used to measure an algorithm's run-time in practice, they cannot provide timing data for all infinitely many possible inputs; the latter can only be achieved by the theoretical methods of run-time analysis.

Shortcomings of empirical metrics
Since algorithms are platform-independent (i.e. a given algorithm can be implemented in an arbitrary programming language on an arbitrary computer running an arbitrary operating system), there are additional significant drawbacks to using an empirical approach to gauge the comparative performance of a given set of algorithms.

Take as an example a program that looks up a specific entry in a sorted list of size n. Suppose this program were implemented on Computer A, a state-of-the-art machine, using a linear search algorithm, and on Computer B, a much slower machine, using a binary search algorithm. Benchmark testing on the two computers running their respective programs might look something like the following:

Based on these metrics, it would be easy to jump to the conclusion that Computer A is running an algorithm that is far superior in efficiency to that of Computer B. However, if the size of the input-list is increased to a sufficient number, that conclusion is dramatically demonstrated to be in error:

Computer A, running the linear search program, exhibits a linear growth rate. The program's run-time is directly proportional to its input size. Doubling the input size doubles the run-time, quadrupling the input size quadruples the run-time, and so forth. On the other hand, Computer B, running the binary search program, exhibits a logarithmic growth rate. Quadrupling the input size only increases the run-time by a constant amount (in this example, 50,000 ns). Even though Computer A is ostensibly a faster machine, Computer B will inevitably surpass Computer A in run-time because it is running an algorithm with a much slower growth rate.

Orders of growth
Informally, an algorithm can be said to exhibit a growth rate on the order of a mathematical function if beyond a certain input size $n$, the function $log_{2}(n) + 1$ times a positive constant provides an upper bound or limit for the run-time of that algorithm. In other words, for a given input size $n$ greater than some $n$0 and a constant $n$, the run-time of that algorithm will never be larger than $f(n)$. This concept is frequently expressed using Big O notation. For example, since the run-time of insertion sort grows quadratically as its input size increases, insertion sort can be said to be of order $c × f(n)$.

Big O notation is a convenient way to express the worst-case scenario for a given algorithm, although it can also be used to express the average-case — for example, the worst-case scenario for quicksort is $O(n^{2})$, but the average-case run-time is $O(n^{2})$.

Empirical orders of growth
Assuming the run-time follows power rule, $O(n log n)$, the coefficient $n$ can be found by taking empirical measurements of run-time $t ≈ kn^{a}$ at some problem-size points ${t_{1}, t_{2}}|undefined$, and calculating ${n_{1}, n_{2}}|undefined$ so that $t_{2}/t_{1} = (n_{2}/n_{1})^{a}$. In other words, this measures the slope of the empirical line on the log–log plot of run-time vs. input size, at some size point. If the order of growth indeed follows the power rule (and so the line on the log–log plot is indeed a straight line), the empirical value of $n$ will stay constant at different ranges, and if not, it will change (and the line is a curved line)—but still could serve for comparison of any two given algorithms as to their empirical local orders of growth behaviour. Applied to the above table:

It is clearly seen that the first algorithm exhibits a linear order of growth indeed following the power rule. The empirical values for the second one are diminishing rapidly, suggesting it follows another rule of growth and in any case has much lower local orders of growth (and improving further still), empirically, than the first one.

Evaluating run-time complexity
The run-time complexity for the worst-case scenario of a given algorithm can sometimes be evaluated by examining the structure of the algorithm and making some simplifying assumptions. Consider the following pseudocode:

1   get a positive integer n from input 2   if n > 10 3       print "This might take a while..." 4   for i = 1 to n 5        for j = 1 to i 6            print i * j 7    print "Done!"

A given computer will take a discrete amount of time to execute each of the instructions involved with carrying out this algorithm. Say that the actions carried out in step 1 are considered to consume time at most T1, step 2 uses time at most T2, and so forth.

In the algorithm above, steps 1, 2 and 7 will only be run once. For a worst-case evaluation, it should be assumed that step 3 will be run as well. Thus the total amount of time to run steps 1-3 and step 7 is:

 * $$T_1 + T_2 + T_3 + T_7. \,$$

The loops in steps 4, 5 and 6 are trickier to evaluate. The outer loop test in step 4 will execute ( n + 1 ) times, which will consume T4( n + 1 ) time. The inner loop, on the other hand, is governed by the value of j, which iterates from 1 to i. On the first pass through the outer loop, j iterates from 1 to 1: The inner loop makes one pass, so running the inner loop body (step 6) consumes T6 time, and the inner loop test (step 5) consumes 2T5 time. During the next pass through the outer loop, j iterates from 1 to 2: the inner loop makes two passes, so running the inner loop body (step 6) consumes 2T6 time, and the inner loop test (step 5) consumes 3T5 time.

Altogether, the total time required to run the inner loop body can be expressed as an arithmetic progression:

 * $$T_6 + 2T_6 + 3T_6 + \cdots + (n-1) T_6 + n T_6$$

which can be factored as

 * $$\left[ 1 + 2 + 3 + \cdots + (n-1) + n \right] T_6 = \left[ \frac{1}{2} (n^2 + n) \right] T_6$$

The total time required to run the inner loop test can be evaluated similarly:

 * $$\begin{align}

& 2T_5 + 3T_5 + 4T_5 + \cdots + (n-1) T_5 + n T_5 + (n + 1) T_5\\ =\ &T_5 + 2T_5 + 3T_5 + 4T_5 + \cdots + (n-1)T_5 + nT_5 + (n+1)T_5 - T_5 \end{align}$$

which can be factored as

 * $$\begin{align}

& T_5 \left[ 1+2+3+\cdots + (n-1) + n + (n + 1) \right] - T_5 \\ =& \left[ \frac{1}{2} (n^2 + n) \right] T_5 + (n + 1)T_5 - T_5 \\ =& \left[ \frac{1}{2} (n^2 + n) \right] T_5 + n T_5 \\ =& \left[ \frac{1}{2} (n^2 + 3n) \right] T_5 \end{align}$$

Therefore, the total run-time for this algorithm is:

 * $$f(n) = T_1 + T_2 + T_3 + T_7 + (n + 1)T_4 + \left[ \frac{1}{2} (n^2 + n) \right] T_6 + \left[ \frac{1}{2} (n^2+3n) \right] T_5$$

which reduces to

 * $$f(n) = \left[ \frac{1}{2} (n^2 + n) \right] T_6 + \left[ \frac{1}{2} (n^2 + 3n) \right] T_5 + (n + 1)T_4 + T_1 + T_2 + T_3 + T_7$$

As a rule-of-thumb, one can assume that the highest-order term in any given function dominates its rate of growth and thus defines its run-time order. In this example, n2 is the highest-order term, so one can conclude that $a = log(t_{2}/t_{1})/log(n_{2}/n_{1})$. Formally this can be proven as follows: "Prove that $\left[ \frac{1}{2} (n^2 + n) \right] T_6 + \left[ \frac{1}{2} (n^2 + 3n) \right] T_5 + (n + 1)T_4 + T_1 + T_2 + T_3 + T_7 \le cn^2,\ n \ge n_0$

$\begin{align} &\left[ \frac{1}{2} (n^2 + n) \right] T_6 + \left[ \frac{1}{2} (n^2 + 3n) \right] T_5 + (n + 1)T_4 + T_1 + T_2 + T_3 + T_7\\ \le &( n^2 + n )T_6 + ( n^2 + 3n )T_5 + (n + 1)T_4 + T_1 + T_2 + T_3 + T_7 \ (\text{for } n \ge 0 ) \end{align}$

Let k be a constant greater than or equal to [T1..T7]

$\begin{align} &T_6( n^2 + n ) + T_5( n^2 + 3n ) + (n + 1)T_4 + T_1 + T_2 + T_3 + T_7 \le k( n^2 + n ) + k( n^2 + 3n ) + kn + 5k\\ = &2kn^2 + 5kn + 5k \le 2kn^2 + 5kn^2 + 5kn^2 \ (\text{for } n \ge 1) = 12kn^2 \end{align}$

Therefore $\left[ \frac{1}{2} (n^2 + n) \right] T_6 + \left[ \frac{1}{2} (n^2 + 3n) \right] T_5 + (n + 1)T_4 + T_1 + T_2 + T_3 + T_7 \le cn^2, n \ge n_0 \text{ for } c = 12k, n_0 = 1$"

A more elegant approach to analyzing this algorithm would be to declare that [T1..T7] are all equal to one unit of time, in a system of units chosen so that one unit is greater than or equal to the actual times for these steps. This would mean that the algorithm's run-time breaks down as follows: "$4+\sum_{i=1}^n i\leq 4+\sum_{i=1}^n n=4+n^2\leq5n^2 \ (\text{for } n \ge 1) =O(n^2).$"

Growth rate analysis of other resources
The methodology of run-time analysis can also be utilized for predicting other growth rates, such as consumption of memory space. As an example, consider the following pseudocode which manages and reallocates memory usage by a program based on the size of a file which that program manages:

while file is still open: let n = size of file for every 100,000 kilobytes of increase in file size double the amount of memory reserved

In this instance, as the file size n increases, memory will be consumed at an exponential growth rate, which is order $f(n) = O(n^{2})$. This is an extremely rapid and most likely unmanageable growth rate for consumption of memory resources.

Relevance
Algorithm analysis is important in practice because the accidental or unintentional use of an inefficient algorithm can significantly impact system performance. In time-sensitive applications, an algorithm taking too long to run can render its results outdated or useless. An inefficient algorithm can also end up requiring an uneconomical amount of computing power or storage in order to run, again rendering it practically useless.

Constant factors
Analysis of algorithms typically focuses on the asymptotic performance, particularly at the elementary level, but in practical applications constant factors are important, and real-world data is in practice always limited in size. The limit is typically the size of addressable memory, so on 32-bit machines 232 = 4 GiB (greater if segmented memory is used) and on 64-bit machines 264 = 16 EiB. Thus given a limited size, an order of growth (time or space) can be replaced by a constant factor, and in this sense all practical algorithms are $O(2^{n})$ for a large enough constant, or for small enough data.

This interpretation is primarily useful for functions that grow extremely slowly: (binary) iterated logarithm (log*) is less than 5 for all practical data (265536 bits); (binary) log-log (log log n) is less than 6 for virtually all practical data (264 bits); and binary log (log n) is less than 64 for virtually all practical data (264 bits). An algorithm with non-constant complexity may nonetheless be more efficient than an algorithm with constant complexity on practical data if the overhead of the constant time algorithm results in a larger constant factor, e.g., one may have $$K > k \log \log n$$ so long as $$K/k > 6$$ and $$n < 2^{2^6} = 2^{64}$$.

For large data linear or quadratic factors cannot be ignored, but for small data an asymptotically inefficient algorithm may be more efficient. This is particularly used in hybrid algorithms, like Timsort, which use an asymptotically efficient algorithm (here merge sort, with time complexity $$n \log n$$), but switch to an asymptotically inefficient algorithm (here insertion sort, with time complexity $$n^2$$) for small data, as the simpler algorithm is faster on small data.

title: Analysis of algorithms


text: Talk:Analysis of algorithms

title: Talk:Analysis of algorithms