Algorithms to Live By.<\/a><\/p>\nIt is about applying lessons from the study of algorithms in the area of computer software to various decision-making situations in life.\u00a0 I am about half way through.\u00a0 It has been very interesting so far.\u00a0 I think it helps that I generally understand things from the computer science side, but the book is written for general consumption.<\/p>\n
One of the first class of decisions they talk about has to do with sampling:\u00a0 given a length of time and a number of samples, how can you make some assumptions about the whole situation.\u00a0 For example, how many apartments do you have to look at to find a good one?<\/p>\n
A general rule is that you’ve seen the full gamut after visiting 37% of the offerings available.\u00a0 If there are 100 available apartments, if you’ve seen 37 you’ve seen them all.\u00a0 There could be an outlier, either terrible or fantastic, but you have enough information to make a decision.<\/p>\n
The author makes a jump from that to life decisions:\u00a0 if you’ve lived about 37% of your lifespan, you’ve probably spent enough time gathering information about your work, your manner of living, etc.<\/p>\n
I found that interesting because the younger generations seem to be waiting a bit longer before settling on such things, longer than my generation and much longer than a few generations ago.\u00a0 Maybe I need to adjust my thinking:\u00a0 the lifespan has increased.\u00a0 Someone who would have needed to settle in by age 22 (roughly 37% of 60) can now search until age 33 (37% of 90).\u00a0 Or at least that is what I gathered from the presentation.<\/p>\n
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[Today’s run: 3.5 miles] I’ve been reading a book recently called Algorithms to Live By. It is about applying lessons from the study of algorithms in the area of computer software to various decision-making situations in life.\u00a0 I am about half way through.\u00a0 It has been very interesting so far.\u00a0 I think it helps that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5528"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5529,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5528\/revisions\/5529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}