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

Encryption and hash algorithms work in similar ways. In each case, there is a need to create confusion and diffusion amongst the bits. Boiled down, confusion is creating a complex relationship between the key and the ciphertext, and diffusion is spreading the information of each bit around.

Many hash functions actually use encryption algorithms (or primitives of encryption algorithms. For example, the SHA-3 candidate Skein uses Threefish as the underlying method to process each block. The difference is that instead of keeping each block of ciphertext, they are destructively, deterministically merged together to a fixed length