Comment by Lerc
11 hours ago
Almost the complete opposite of prioritisation.
The Pareto points are where you sacrifice the least of anything to get the most of everything.
There's the saying about buying computers. Good, Cheap, Fast, pick any two. That's where you would prioritise.
If someone makes something that better, cheaper, and faster, or even pretty close to the best on two of those and clearly better on the other. It's a Pareto point.
Over time computers are getting better, cheaper and faster (software notwithstanding). The leading edge of that advance of all of the things is the Pareto front.
Given this in the TFA
> a Pareto front represents the set of solutions where no solution outperforms any other solution in the set at every objective
I do not believe you are correct when you say
> something that better, cheaper, and faster, or even pretty close to the best on two of those and clearly better on the other. It's a Pareto point.
Since that would outperform on every objective
GP's point that it's prioritisation does not seem incorrect to me. Prioritisation involves considering trade-offs of various approaches and deciding which aspects & attributes to optimise for, at the expense of others.
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I’m not sure how that’s the opposite of prioritizing, but if I’m wrong, then I’ll happily admit it.
We choose our items/workflows/technologies/whatever, so we get the best/most efficient/most effective/whatever, across the widest possible set.
Sounds like prioritizing, to me, but I’m just a dumb hick, so I suppose I can be wrong.
Prioritising is when you choose something over another. A drag racer prioritises time to travel a quarter mile.
Going for the Pareto is when you elect not to prioritise. It is explicitly deciding to not choose one property over another ant to keep everything as much as you can.
I read it as finding the point of maximum effectiveness. The point at which the most is done for the most.
Getting to that point can be calculated (in some cases), but I suspect most folks get there by trial and error. Finding out what is effective, and what is not, and choosing what is effective, over what is not, until there's no longer a choice. That often becomes tribal knowledge, and is handed down. There's always someone trying to improve it, and when they figure it out, that gets added to the tribal knowledge. Basically, that's how nature does it, so there's some serious prior art. Natural Selection is brutal prioritization.
In Morocco, they used to announce the end of the Ramadan fast, by holding up a black thread and a white thread, and waiting until they could not tell the difference.
Then, they'd fire a cannon, and everybody would dig into some awesome soup. Sort of the same thing.