Algorithms to Live By
出版信息
Brian Christian、Tom Griffiths / Henry Holt and Co. / 2016-4-19 / USD 30.00
内容简介
A fascinating exploration of how insights from computer algorithms can be applied to our everyday lives, helping to solve common decision-making problems and illuminate the workings of the human mind
All our lives are constrained by limited space and time, limits that give rise to a particular set of problems. What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of new activities and familiar favorites is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not: computers, too, face the same constraints, so computer scientists have been grappling with their version of such issues for decades. And the solutions they've found have much to teach us.
In a dazzlingly interdisciplinary work, acclaimed author Brian Christian and cognitive scientist Tom Griffiths show how the algorithms used by computers can 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 understanding the workings of memory, Algorithms to Live By transforms the wisdom of computer science into strategies for human living.
作者简介
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.
目录
Introduction 1
Algorithms to Live By
1 Optimal Stopping 9
When to Stop Looking
2 Explore/Exploit 31
The Latest vs. the Greatest
3 Sorting 59
Making Order
4 Caching 84
Forget About It
5 Scheduling 105
First Things First
6 Bayes’s Rule 128
Predicting the Future
7 Overfitting 149
When to Think Less
8 Relaxation 169
Let It Slide
9 Randomness 182
When to Leave It to Chance
10 Networking 205
How We Connect
11 Game Theory 229
The Minds of Others
Conclusion 256
Computational Kindness
Notes 263
Bibliography 315
Acknowledgments 335
Index 339
