Algorithms To Live By #1: Expectations, Authors, And Algorithms

As the followers of my series might know, I usually have two series running side by side. I do this because very often ideas from one series nurture ideas for the other one. Furthermore, it helps make it less monotonous for my readers. For a couple of weeks now, I have only had one series, "The Moral Molecule Under The Microscope". I had been thinking which book from my shelf to tackle next. I finally reached a decision. For now, I am using the name of the book for the series, "Algorithms To Live By". As we move forward with it, I might change the name to something more representative of what we are doing or talking about.

The book was first published in 2016. It has two authors, Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths. Brian Christian is better known as the author of "The Most Human Human", which was a Wall Street Journal bestseller, New York Times editors' choice, and a New Yorker favorite book of the year. His writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and The Paris Review. He lives in San Francisco. On the other hand, Tom Griffiths is a professor of psychology and cognitive science at UC Berkeley. There, he directs the Computational Cognitive Science Lab. He has published more than two hundred scientific papers on topics ranging from cognitive psychology to machine learning. For his papers, he has received awards from the National Science Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, the American Psychological Association, and the Psychonomic Society. He lives in Berkeley.

For the purpose of this series, it is important to know what is an algorithm. Therefore, before going any further, I want to challenge the common connotation that the word "algorithm" has. Many people, when thinking about this word tend to imagine machinations of big data, big government, and big business. It is the case that big data, a government, or a business have several algorithms in place for several different purposes. Nevertheless, in the simplest terms, an algorithm is nothing more than a series of steps to solve a problem. Long before algorithms were used by machines, they were used by people. Furthermore, we still use algorithms in our daily lives. Think about how to solve long division by hand. The process to solve it is an algorithm in itself. Something much simpler, like the necessary steps to bake a cake is also an algorithm! Have you ever seen a person solve a Rubik's cube? It is quite impressing. Well, these people who can solve a Rubik's cube are (most likely) following an algorithm.

Pixabay image source.

What I like the most about books in this "scientific literature" genre is that you learn a lot but in addition, a lot of authors make a great effort to portray how their research can help every day decisions or interactions. From the title of this book, and the small part of the introduction that I read, I can already tell that it is just what I like. I have already learned an algorithm to apply in my life, but I won't ruin the surprise for you guys. You will have to wait until the next post. I cannot wait to learn all the possible algorithms that the book has to offer in order to make my life better. Or at least hope so, haha.

Best,

@capatazche