3 ms·

Feynman's Restaurant Problem

2 points by alexmolas 4y ago

janandonly 4y ago
This just proves how useless or limited the use of maths in daily life. Also, overthinking anything in life makes you more anxious. That is called "The Paradox of choice" (Watch the TED Talk by Barry Schwartz: https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_the_paradox_of_choice https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_the_paradox_of_choi...) > Although these results make sense from a mathematical point of view, no one in their right mind would follow the optimal strategy. This is probably caused by the unrealistic assumptions we made, ie: you can’t go to the same restaurant every day of your life without getting tired of it. One possible solution is to change the rating of a restaurant r i to be dependent on the number of times you’ve visited it, ie r i (n). However, this is outside the scope of this post and we’re not going to do it, but maybe it can serve as inspiration for another post.
- alexmolas 4y ago
  > This just proves how useless or limited the use of maths in daily life. In my opinion this proves that making the wrong assumptions can lead you to useless results, but I wouldn't go as far as saying that maths are useless in daily life. On the other hand, I agree with you about the paradox of choice, I use to call it "analysis paralysis".
- jleyank 4y ago
  Does this mean “math above algebra”? Algebra is used at the word problem level, trying for unit prices or maximizing number and preference of candy bars at halloween and stuff like that. Many of HN readers use more complex math in their professional lives I’m sure so I’ll take this as “normal life” instead. While I don’t do hardware, I’m sure there are people who have used trig doing construction or landscaping (explicitly or intuitively). I can’t thing of anything else with my morning coffee - can others?
  - alexmolas 4y ago
    All machine learning is based on top of linear algebra, calculus, and statistics, so yeah, a lot of maths in my "normal life" :)

2 points by alexmolas 4y ago

This just proves how useless or limited the use of maths in daily life. Also, overthinking anything in life makes you more anxious. That is called "The Paradox of choice" (Watch the TED Talk by Barry Schwartz: https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_the_paradox_of_choice https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_the_paradox_of_choi...) > Although these results make sense from a mathematical point of view, no one in their right mind would follow the optimal strategy. This is probably caused by the unrealistic assumptions we made, ie: you can’t go to the same restaurant every day of your life without getting tired of it. One possible solution is to change the rating of a restaurant r i to be dependent on the number of times you’ve visited it, ie r i (n). However, this is outside the scope of this post and we’re not going to do it, but maybe it can serve as inspiration for another post.

alexmolas 4y ago
> This just proves how useless or limited the use of maths in daily life. In my opinion this proves that making the wrong assumptions can lead you to useless results, but I wouldn't go as far as saying that maths are useless in daily life. On the other hand, I agree with you about the paradox of choice, I use to call it "analysis paralysis".
jleyank 4y ago
Does this mean “math above algebra”? Algebra is used at the word problem level, trying for unit prices or maximizing number and preference of candy bars at halloween and stuff like that. Many of HN readers use more complex math in their professional lives I’m sure so I’ll take this as “normal life” instead. While I don’t do hardware, I’m sure there are people who have used trig doing construction or landscaping (explicitly or intuitively). I can’t thing of anything else with my morning coffee - can others?
- alexmolas 4y ago
  All machine learning is based on top of linear algebra, calculus, and statistics, so yeah, a lot of maths in my "normal life" :)