An algorithm is a procedure to accomplish a specific task. They solve general well specified problems and are the ideas behind computer programs.

Rubyquiz is an interesting repository for ruby programs that implement queit interesting algorithms. Even though the programs may not have anything to do with biology, some of the algorithms definitely do. It is a good place to a find a start point for your ruby algorithm implementation. Browsing the different sets of problems can give a lot of insight on how to approach some common programming problems eg. writing an inference engine, a hidden markov chain , dictionary matcher etc

The site has about 147 quizzes as of this writing. Take a look!