life advice

How to Win the Lottery

…or rather, why playing the lottery might make sense, depending on your utility function. I once had a math teacher who proudly proclaimed that she played the lottery every week. She justified this by saying that her ticket had just as much chance to win as any other ticket, and someone often wins, so why…

How to Deal with Rejection

I lied. This post isn’t about how to deal with rejection; it’s about how to make sure our fear of rejection doesn’t hold us back. I’m a strong believer that taking the initiative is the best tack in most situations. For example, you should always ask people out instead of waiting around for someone to ask…

How to Date Efficiently

…or why you should always ask people out. One of my favorite math problems is the stable marriage problem. Let’s say that you have n heterosexual men and n heterosexual women where each man has ranked each woman in order of mating preference, and each woman has ranked each man the same way. Can we…