Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions [Hardcover]

Wall Street JournalBestseller
New York TimesEditor's Choice
New YorkerFavorite Book of the Year

A remarkable book... A solid, research-based book thats applicable to real life. -Forbes

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 theyve 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 ones inbox to peering into the future,Algorithms to Live Bytransforms the wisdom of computer science into strategies for human living.

Brian Christianis the author ofThe Most Human Human, aWall Street Journalbestseller,New York Timeseditors choice, and aNew Yorkerfavorite book of the year. His writing has appeared inThe New Yorker,The Atlantic,Wired,The Wall Street Journal,The Guardian, andThe Paris Review, as well as in scientific journals such asCognitive Science, and has been translated into eleven languages. He lives in San Francisco.

Tom Griffithsis a professor of psychology and cognitive science at UC Berkeley, where he directs the ComputationallãÉ