#18: Don’t lose the objective

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This weeks post is inspired by a post on a data science competition.

It might seem niche, but I think the takeaway is as universal as it gets.

So, first, if you are into data science or machine learning, read the post, it is worth it.

If you’re not, just continue for my personal takeaways.

So the guy in the post won the competition because he found a way to exploit the evaluation criteria. All the other people started doing what they thought was best, to solve the problem at hand, but our hero thought differently.

Instead of providing the most novel and elegant solution, he provided one that scored the best. It turned out to be significantly simpler than the rest, and it scored around 20% higher.

While this might seem dishonest or “cheating”, I think this is the perfect crossing point of “work smarter not harder” and “thinking out of the box”.

There was no reason for him to provide a novel solution since all that mattered were the evaluation scores. And I think we can all learn from him.

The other example that sparks to my mind is my sisters. She’s younger than me, and she’s taking the national end-of-highschool exam (érettségi). And she’s pouring her soul into preparing, working very hard.
And thankfully she also started to realize that here it does not matter how well you know the subject.
If you don’t understand a topic completely, but can ace the exercises related to it, then you shouldn’t waste time studying that.

All that matters is your score at the end.

I would like to invite you all to think about where in your life are you chasing an imaginary goal, and missing the real objective.

As always, thanks for reading, and I hope to see you next time,

G