Amazon.co.uk:Customer reviews: Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

Top positive review

Smart with real-life relevance

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 April 2021

I am not a computer scientist but a statistics student. Obviously very well researched. The best thing about it is its relevance to real world problems and you come away with useful knowledge to apply. There is no maths in the text but instead the rational logical format expected from computer scientists. This means that it doesn't flow easily and you have to concentrate at times to keep the thread hence the mark-down. This book raises a bigger point for me: computers are logical because they were built and coded by us so really they are just versions of us with bigger brains. Which means many of the point raised surely are just things we would have concluded by ourselves if we had the time & patience to crank the computations, right?

7 people found this helpful

Top critical review

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amit kukadia

Thoughtful book. Taxing at times

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 December 2021

This book was interesting but at times I found it difficult to find the motivation to continue.

As such a request I have is for the book to havs a summary page at the end of each chapter so that the key learnings can be taken away.

Given how long it took me to read it, I fear some of the things I have learned have disappeared from my brain!

2 people found this helpful

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ROBIN

Smart with real-life relevance

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 April 2021

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7 people found this helpful

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Customer

Well written

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 August 2018

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This book talks about the history and evolution of algorithms from the very beginning, talking about particular problems and the different approaches scientists, mathematicians and others have adopted in trying to solve these issues. This book is clever in how it can get the reader to see a general problem and showing them how it can be broken down into different categories that a computer can solve, and how the thinking to solve that problems can solve other problems. This is a key skill to have in fields such as applied mathematics and computer science and gets the reader thinking about problems in the right way.

16 people found this helpful

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ZigZag

straight to the point and accessible for laypeople

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 August 2017

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This book is a well-made translation of the algorithmic thinking used by computer scientists into plain-English. I like the author's style of writing because it is straight to the point and accessible for laypeople. He make hard concepts easy to understand and uses a lot of examples throughout the book. Amazing piece of work!

21 people found this helpful

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W. Swales

Illuminating and fascinating insights into how to improve your lot through insight and decisiveness

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 June 2022

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Using what appears to be trivialities, what this book does is gently steer you towards achieving and leading a worthwhile fulfilling life by using AI (Artificial Intelligence) logic to help you to spot and understand hidden underlying, severely flawed, deeply entrenched, ingrained systems and practices that are out there to deliberately ensnare you; trap you; and ultimately enslave you and destroy you should you fail to grasp the nettle and do something about the root causes of your unhappiness – be it staying in a pointless fruitless job; failing to acquire skills you need to advance yourself; being influenced by others; or enduring a worthless unfulfilling relationship.

You are then given guidance to develop strategies for living in happiness by using a more LOGICAL approach to spot danger and take positive action to prevent jeopardy by considering if what you are doing is meaningful and worthwhile and brings LONG-TERM happiness.

This ‘ME TOO’ book is not for everyone because it asks you to examine and challenge traditional ‘taboos’ and what is euphemistically known as ‘conventional wisdom’ – and then having the COURAGE to take the required actions to set your life in order and gain your liberty and FREEDOM.

Five stars

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Susan Stepney

This book does several things very well indeed

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 January 2022

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This book does several things very well indeed. It introduced a broad range of Computer Science’s fundamental algorithms, explaining them simply and clearly. It shows how we might apply these algorithms in our everyday lives, to help us make more efficient and effective decisions. And it shows that even when we have the provably best means of making a decision, it might not always (or even very often) work.

It covers approaches to searching, and when to stop looking for improvements over what you already have. It discuses sorting, and tradeoffs between time spent keeping things in order, and time spent finding them later. It covers scheduling, and how the best order to do things in depends very much on what you are trying to optimise. It finishes with game theory, explaining why some situations lead to poor outcomes for all, and how understanding this can help you know how to change the situation to get better outcomes. And it does all this, and more, with a light touch that makes it very readable.

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amit kukadia

Thoughtful book. Taxing at times

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 December 2021

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2 people found this helpful

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Erik Rasmussen

Great book, pleasure to read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 May 2017

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This was a great book, I flew through it. It was structured, one topic explored pretty thoroughly per chapter, and more importantly they were all interesting. The writing style was easy to read and funny, detailed enough that I felt like I had a good grasp of the content without getting to technical. I'd recommend this to anyone who's curious about computer programming, or math in general.

16 people found this helpful

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Steven T

Make maths actually practical to your day to day life

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 April 2020

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This was a great read, it made me grab my pen several times to jot down stuff that I wanted to look into further later on. There are several interesting topics discussed throughout the book including Bayes Theorem, Game Theory and Optimal Stopping problems. All topics I briefly had touched upon at school but long had forgotten, I really wish I had the authors as my teachers because they truly do engross you with their real-world practical examples! That and their humourous storytelling makes this something I really would recommend.

2 people found this helpful

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Kirah G

Logical

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 February 2022

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My very logically minded male partner enjoys it, makes sense of the things he was already thinking about. I've read a little bit and it's written clearly, not for my free spirit though.

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Kindle Customer Spot

Worth the effort.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 February 2022

Verified Purchase

This book is an excellent insight into the process of decision making. The book has relevance for almost any life challenge you may face.

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Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

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