Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

Brian Christian · Tom Griffiths

Apr 2016 · Sold by Henry Holt and Company

About this ebook

An exploration of how computer algorithms can be applied to our everyday lives to solve common decision-making problems and illuminate the workings of the human mind.

What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of the new and familiar is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not. Computers, like us, confront limited space and time, so computer scientists have been grappling with similar problems for decades. And the solutions they’ve found have much to teach us.

In a dazzlingly interdisciplinary work, Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths show how algorithms developed for computers also untangle very human questions. They explain how to have better hunches and when to leave things to chance, how to deal with overwhelming choices and how best to connect with others. From finding a spouse to finding a parking spot, from organizing one’s inbox to peering into the future, Algorithms to Live By transforms the wisdom of computer science into strategies for human living.

Ratings and reviews

It circles around how algorithms can solve problems in our daily lives, and I found it quite profound. Was a computer science student myself, I liked the way the author explain the case that they're trying to point out, and I believe everyone can understand it quite easily.

immersed in space shipping or shipping spaces in reader one perspective in changing history from future to past when travelling toward or away from big bang expansion and chronological fwd or reverse because one can explain how information is ubiquitous faster than speed of light which too had levels but we'll never travel faster than or at, for approaching it is like the non repeating transcendental break after 52, million decimal places or it's rather variable to fit couture and emc3 happens for emc2 to manifest for the galaxy seen zoomed out is flat is a better Lorem Ipsum than most seem bias?

this is great review ever she teach a lot so that we can have a wisdom intelligent in our life education its the most powerful weapon in life that can make us build strong educative relationship ever

About the author

Brian Christian is the author of The Most Human Human, a Wall Street Journal bestseller, New York Times editors’ choice, and a New Yorker favorite book of the year. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and The Paris Review, as well as in scientific journals such as Cognitive Science, and has been translated into eleven languages. He lives in San Francisco.

Tom Griffiths is a professor of psychology and cognitive science at UC Berkeley, where he directs the Computational Cognitive Science Lab. He has published more than 150 scientific papers on topics ranging from cognitive psychology to cultural evolution, and has received awards from the National Science Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, the American Psychological Association, and the Psychonomic Society, among others. He lives in Berkeley.