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Mario Meets Pareto

mayerowitz.io

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Re: Mario Meets Pareto

#81

Post by wiether »

Agentlien wrote: post #70

On a tangent, I was a bit confused by the everyday examples given in this article. "We're often faced with similar trade-offs. You want a meal that's both cheap and delicious? A job that's both well-paid, easy, and fulfilling?" I really don't feel like "easy" is a dimension I wish to optimize for in a job. It almost feels opposite to what I've actually optimized for - since for me a fulfilling job usually means full…

  > I want a job without unnecessary friction, without interpersonal drama, even one that's low stress.
That's part of how I see an "easy" job. Where I can focus on working on the actual tasks at hand.

Doesn't matter if the actual job is filling glasses of water or building rockets; as long as I can focus on it for 100% of my working hours, I'd see it as an "easy" job.

Re: Mario Meets Pareto

#82

Post by Agentlien »

Georgelemental wrote: post #76
Agentlien wrote: post #70

On a tangent, I was a bit confused by the everyday examples given in this article. "We're often faced with similar trade-offs. You want a meal that's both cheap and delicious? A job that's both well-paid, easy, and fulfilling?" I really don't feel like "easy" is a dimension I wish to optimize for in a job. It almost feels opposite to what I've actually optimized for - since for me a fulfilling job usually means full…

Well then, you would prioritize "fulfilling" in your utility function. Others might make a different choice; e.g. a single parent who needs to save time and energy for family might prefer "easy" at the cost of boring drudgery

I think what I am saying is more that "easy" is too broad a vector to optimize along because it combines too much - both good and bad. I don't want a job without challenges of any kind.

But I definitely want a job without stress, danger, or physical strain on my body. Perhaps I am just looking for a similar word which doesn't imply anything about the complexity of the task at hand.

Re: Mario Meets Pareto

#83

Post by jerf »

munchbunny wrote: post #79
jerf wrote: post #15

This is a really important concept for developers. One aspect for developers that I see quite often is the assertion that "We can't have X without giving up more Y", most commonly "we can't have more security without giving up on user experience". With the Pareto idea in mind, we can see that that statement is true, if and only if you are in fact on the Pareto frontier of security and user experience already. However…

Agreed with what you said, when you're only considering security and usability you're often not at a Pareto optimal state, but once you add cost into the picture you see a lot more cases of being on the Pareto optimal boundary, or at least in case where the next improvement only comes with significant effort (by re-platforming, for example).

Yes, I don't mean to imply that this is some sort of clear majority situation or anything. I just mean that I've definitely both seen on HN and participated in real life in some conversations in which it was taken as given that we must give up one thing to get another when nobody had in fact established that we were on the Pareto frontier. Or, considered from a local point of view, whether the tradeoff really was inevitable. I have had cases where we could have had both, with no difficulty.

Re: Mario Meets Pareto

#84

Post by rtkwe »

duskdozer wrote: post #68
rtkwe wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turn off reader there are graphics along with the paragraphs. Reminds me of the complaints that used to be super common from people religiously refusing to enable javascript and complaining when breaking the site breaks the site.

Why do you think people refused to enable javascript?

I saw a lot of people saying various things along the lines of "not running strangers code on my machine" and some "you should serve me the site working even if JS is disabled". The exact reason doesn't really matter it's more that if you're intentionally gimping the website you don't really get to complain about the site not loading.

Re: Mario Meets Pareto

#85

Post by xp84 »

yathern wrote: post #56

Apologies for the self-promotion, but I learned about the Pareto Front from this site a while back - and applied it to Mini PCs with https://minipcs.zip which plots Mini PCs based on Compute vs Price (and other metrics) - highlighting the pareto front to find the optimal unit.

Thanks for posting this! It's an awesome tool. Makes me want to buy more tiny PCs. My only feedback is many of the ebay listings it points to are sold out, but I assume there's a limit to the freshness you can get. Still though, I found pretty good rates of success just pasting the important parts of the name of the sold-out listing into search.

Re: Mario Meets Pareto

#86

Post by kridsdale1 »

moomin wrote: post #61

Of course I, and most of the dads I know, optimise for something else: what’s the car that will keep me competitive, but probably losing, to the kids?

My trick is to just never power slide when I need to be handicapped to not ruin the kids Christmas. Or tap the accel A button in a PWM pattern.

Re: Mario Meets Pareto

#87

Post by chriswarbo »

charv wrote: post #52

I would really love to be able to explore this data, e.g. what is the "worst" driver? Is there an inverse Pareto front?

> Is there an inverse Pareto front?

Yes, trivially. Just look at the opposite end of each metric. Pareto optimality doesn't know/care what each metrics means, since it keeps them all separate.

Re: Mario Meets Pareto

#88

Post by elwell »

Agentlien wrote: post #70

On a tangent, I was a bit confused by the everyday examples given in this article. "We're often faced with similar trade-offs. You want a meal that's both cheap and delicious? A job that's both well-paid, easy, and fulfilling?" I really don't feel like "easy" is a dimension I wish to optimize for in a job. It almost feels opposite to what I've actually optimized for - since for me a fulfilling job usually means full…

Felt like covert advertisements.
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