Ross A. Baker reviewed Algorithms to live by by Brian Christian
Don't be put off by "algorithm"
5 stars
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 …
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.
