Algorithms To Live By

Once you know your sample size to make a hiring / purchase decision; observe for 37% of the sample; then commit to the FIRST option which is better than all previous options
In the real world, since we need to factor the opportunity cost of our time, the value is closer to 31%

Parking is often viewed as a space problem; but it is actually a process problem (i.e. there is a time & financial cost associated with finding parking)

Childhood is considered the exploratory phase whereas old age the exploitation phase of life. However, this depends on the "remaining expected lifespan" of the individual
Zelen's Algorithm is used in clinical trials (adaptive design) versus randomized control trials so that patients have a shot at survival
Zelen's Algorithm involves each subject being assigned a treatment based on drawing balls from a bag (each success of a treatment adds one ball for that treatment; failure adds one ball to the others)

Question: Should you even be sorting if there is a LOW or NO cost of Search?
Bucket Sort is most efficient as long as you have m buckets and n items to categorize, this is O(mn) which when m is small, becomes O(n)

Least Recently Used (LRU) eliminates memory which is least used - the best method
Noguchi file storing; just take each new paper and old paper which you have read into the left most side of the draw. This is a case of self organizing
Ebbinghaus forgetting curve: Brain doesn't run out of memory space - having excess memory makes it take longer to search (hence old people forget); this is known as the Tyranny of Experience

Priority Inheritance v/s Priority Inversion: Any task should inherit the priorities of the highest order priority task which it is blocking
Thrashing means a system is unable to do work because it is fully occupied processing what new work is coming its way
Personal productivity is balancing throughput & responsiveness; spend as long on a task as possible w/o having your responsiveness fall below a certain level