Fundamental difference between Hashing and Encryption algorithms

Question

I see a lot of confusion between hashes and encryption algorithms and I would like to hear some more expert advice about:

1. When to use hashes vs encryptions<

Answer 1

Symmetric Encryption:

Symmetric encryption may also be referred to as shared key or shared secret encryption. In symmetric encryption, a single key is used both to encrypt and decrypt traffic.

Asymmetric Encryption:

Asymmetric encryption is also known as public-key cryptography. Asymmetric encryption differs from symmetric encryption primarily in that two keys are used: one for encryption and one for decryption. The most common asymmetric encryption algorithm is RSA.

Compared to symmetric encryption, asymmetric encryption imposes a high computational burden, and tends to be much slower. Thus, it isn't typically employed to protect payload data. Instead, its major strength is its ability to establish a secure channel over a nonsecure medium (for example, the Internet). This is accomplished by the exchange of public keys, which can only be used to encrypt data. The complementary private key, which is never shared, is used to decrypt.

Hashing:

Finally, hashing is a form of cryptographic security which differs from encryption. Whereas encryption is a two step process used to first encrypt and then decrypt a message, hashing condenses a message into an irreversible fixed-length value, or hash. Two of the most common hashing algorithms seen in networking are MD5 and SHA-1.

Read more here:http://packetlife.net/blog/2010/nov/23/symmetric-asymmetric-encryption-hashing/