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027 Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths: Algorithms to Live By

The authors demonstrate how computer algorithms used in computer science can be applied in our daily life to optimize decisions.

Duration: 11 hours
50 minutes
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Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths: Algorithms to Live By

Summary

The book Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions discusses how computer algorithms used in computer science can be used in everyday life. The authors take readers on a journey that explores the principles behind computer algorithms and demonstrates how these principles can be used in decision-making processes. They explain how algorithms such as “optimal stopping” and “bayesian analysis” can be applied in our daily lives to help us make better decisions. They provide numerous examples of how these algorithms can be used in areas such as dating, finding a parking spot, or determining the best time to buy a house.

About

Title: Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

Author: Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths

Publishing Year: 2017

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Length in hours: 12 hours and 23 minutes

5 main ideas

  1. Algorithms used in computer science can be applied to human decision-making processes.
  2. “Explore/Exploit” tradeoff is a critical concept in decision-making processes.
  3. Optimal stopping algorithm can be applied in a variety of everyday situations, such as house hunting, job hiring, and even dating.
  4. Bayesian analysis can be applied to estimate probabilities of future events.
  5. Overfitting can lead to a bias in decision-making processes.
Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths: Algorithms to Live By

5 funny quotes

  1. “If you can't decide what to do, get on the wrong bus and see where it takes you.”
  2. “We prefer to think of ourselves as smart, rational creatures who think through our decisions carefully. But our minds are really good at coming up with excuses to justify our decisions after the fact.”
  3. “If only life were so simple that we could have the best of all worlds. If only we could choose the parking spot with the shortest exit route, the job candidate with the most talent and the least salary, and the spouse who fulfills all our desires and has no annoying quirks. But as with all optimization problems, we often have to make tradeoffs between conflicting goals.”
  4. “Even if you're not interested in dating, the exploration-vs-exploitation dilemma is a pretty common one. Should you stick with your current job or look for something new?”
  5. “Our problem is that, given the costs of being wrong, we're willing to give up on being right.”

5 thought-provoking quotes​

  1. “What computer scientists have found is that when we're looking for insight, sometimes it pays to broaden our view, to look at the forest instead of the trees, and to listen to the choir rather than sing solo.”
  2. “The more we rely on technology to make us efficient, the fewer skills we have to confront the unexpected.”
  3. “The idea of success is important to us, and we often bring this attitude to the search for novel solutions. But sometimes failure is a necessary step toward a solution, as incremental failures gradually expose the problem and the space of possibilities.”
  4. “The point is not to be perfect. The point is to be sufficiently good.”
  5. “In the long run, it's more important to be smart than to be lucky.”

5 dilemmas

  1. The explore/exploit dilemma: choosing between trying something new and sticking with what you know.
  2. The prediction problem: balancing the desire for accurate predictions with the need for simplicity.
  3. The sorting problem: organizing information in a way that maximizes efficiency and accessibility.
  4. The clustering problem: grouping similar things together while minimizing the differences between groups.
  5. The decision-making problem: making optimal choices in situations with limited information.

5 examples

  1. The secretary problem
  2. The explore/exploit dilemma
  3. The knapsack problem
  4. The traveling salesman problem
  5. The Prisoner's Dilemma

Referenced books

  1. "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman
  2. "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas R. Hofstadter
  3. "The Art of Computer Programming" by Donald E. Knuth

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“The more we rely on technology to make us efficient, the fewer skills we have to confront the unexpected.”

Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths: Algorithms to Live By

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