The symbol of the thing is not the thing: people (should) care about the thing. You don't need a degree to get your head around algorithms. If you can write a simple binary search, for example (arguably the most fundamental algorithm), that's a plus. Therefore a good interviewer will get you to write binary search (the thing) on a whiteboard without saying "binary search" (the symbol of the thing) and see if you can reason your way through it. They will be much more interested in your thought process than whether your syntax is correct.