Algorithms to Live By

Algorithms to Live By, by Brian Christian & Tom Griffiths

Our Rating: 4.5/5

Book Summary:

Algorithms To Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions is a non-fiction book which explores the nature of computer algorithms in relation to human thinking and cognition, and how these algorithms can be applied to real-life situations to solve our many daily problems by illuminating the inner workings of the human mind, its functions and how it works. The authors, Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths explain how to solve common problems in several ways, using knowledge from computer science, mathematics, statistics and psychology to solve a very large variety of problems, from finding a parking space to finding a spouse, or even how to organize your email inbox. This book delves into these issues and many more, and truly shows how computer science is relevant and can be applied to many real-life situations, even if the application may not seem entirely relevant at first glance.

Book Review:

I usually don’t read non-fiction books, but computer science and technology have always been a major interest of mine, so I decided to give this book a go. I ended up enjoying Algorithms to Live By much more than I expected, as I had expected it to be much more boring and complicated, however, this wasn’t the case. The book is easily presented and readable, including graphs and diagrams explaining certain statistical trends. I really enjoyed how the book shows how relevant and how important computer science is in the world, and how our knowledge of computers can help us solve problems through algorithms. One of my favourite examples of this found in the book is the optimal stopping problem, which described how to solve problems such as finding a house, a suitable applicant for a job, or even a spouse, for example, the problem of when to stop looking for a new secretary when searching to hire one, as there could always be a better one applying in the future. Surprisingly, the answer was very simple, in that you should observe only 37% of the choices, then choose the next applicant that is superior to all the others before it. Overall, I really enjoyed this book as it helped me to further understand algorithms and computer science without being over complicated, and I would recommend it to anyone that has a keen interest in computer science.