Algorithms to Live By

I received this for Jólabókaflóðið. My wife leans on her library background to find the books for the family, and I lean on my linguistics background to pronounce "Jólabókaflóðið". She always picks well, but the word "algorithm" had become so offputting by Christmas 2023, I was a bit apprehensive.

This book is not about addictive commercial social media, AI black boxes, or making you click on ads. It connects Computer Science 101 to daily life. I think it's something that comes natural to me. There's a chapter on sorting. I remember discovering that splitting my baseball cards into smaller piles and sorting those first saved a lot of time a decade before I learned Big O notation. This book is full of similar connections, presenting a life problem, and connecting it to a fundamental of computer science.

The book does not go particularly deep into the math and science. It discusses optimal stopping and introduces the 37% Rule, but the only mention of 1/e is in a footnote, and while it discusses related problems, no formulas are presented. I would have loved to read this book as the kid sorting his baseball cards instead of the old programmer with a degree in computer science and see if it still connected. I recommended it to my 17-year-old, so, we'll see.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and its concluding remarks about "computational kindness" resonated the most.

It's a little dry, given the subject matter, but it is so good I was disappointed when I realized that the last third is just attributions and references. I wanted more. As a computer engineer I was already familiar with every algorthim touched on, but this book put them in a perspective I'd never seen them from before and made some of them click in a way that feels more like understanding. Especially the chapter on sorting, and the one on game theory. I was disappointed to find that there's no real solution to game theory, but I suppose that's what makes games entertaining. When a sequel comes out, I'll pick it up right away.

A really interesting book applying some of the solutions we have learned from mathematics and computers to decision making for human beings in real life. Not only is it interesting how the one can apply to the other, but just the process of talking about it gives different insights in how to look at these real life problems.

If you've ever wondered things like:
- is having an empty inbox worth the time and effort it takes to organize your email daily?
- is having a tidy desk/house worth more than having the things you often need close to hand?
- how can I decide if I've found the "best" (house/spouse/job/etc) without predicting the future?

All these puzzles and more are discussed in this book through the lens of what mathematics/computer science theory tells us is the "best" solution, along with why this may or may not also apply to real life, and what you can do about it. No detailed mathematics is necessary, this is more about the theory and even philosophy than any direct numbers or formulas.

Not only is the theory itself fascinating (how do programmers deliberately introduce "randomness" or "mistakes" into a system to avoid computers getting stuck in loops) but so is the applicability to real world problems and why what we think we SHOULD do (such as keep an immaculately clean home) may not actually make logical sense (and now when my desk is a mess I can prove it's the most efficient solution!)

If these are topics that sound interesting to you, then I highly recommend picking up this book.

An overview computer science textbook meets a philosophical reflection on the lived human condition meets practical advice column... kinda perfect, for me at least. While this had the risk of becoming all kinds of rough nerd self-help or self-absorbed sensationalist cleverness, the author's applications of compsci approaches to categories of daily life end up neatly riding the line between humble and profound. But perhaps this is just so readable because it closely matches how I see the world.