An automated monitoring script is designed to count how many server ping response times (in milliseconds) exceed a critical threshold of 120 ms.

Here is the pseudo-code for the algorithm:

SET spikeCount TO 0
FOR EACH response FROM pingTimes DO
    IF (response > 120) THEN
        SET spikeCount TO spikeCount + 1
    END IF
END FOREACH
SEND "Spikes detected: " & spikeCount TO DISPLAY

A small dataset of response times is sorted in descending order and stored in the array pingTimes:

115, 98, 85, 72, 50, 42