Summary
Most of the digital technology around us processes and stores information in a sequential, well-ordered manner. For example, a computer hard drive stores data bits in a structured way that allows them to be retrieved in order. Cell phone systems transmit and receive data as sequences of bits coded to allow the receiver to reconstruct the information in the same order it was sent. Recent technological advances such as DNA sequencing technologies, however, defy this ordered information paradigm. Such technologies generate data consisting of many short, out-of-order fragments. Processing this dat
