The Mission

What is success? I must have read hundreds of articles preaching strategies to achieve success. They tell me pick up these habits, follow these simple steps, adopt these rules to live by etc. etc. etc. They all insist I get up approximately 4 hours earlier than I want to and eat exclusively plant based substitutes that cost 3 times the price of the original product.

The question I have is, if I were to follow the steps and achieve success what would that mean? What is success? What makes something successful? How can I tell if I am successful?

Who am I and why do I care about ‘what is success’?

My name is Claire and I am setting out on a mission to define ‘what is success’. I have always loved problem solving and mathematics (with the brief exception of the summer aged 16-18 where I tried to suppress my inner nerd hoping to become a successful rock star, artist, designer… As you may have guessed it did not go well, but I digress). My favorite book is Freakonomics - in case you’re not familiar with it, in Freakonomics economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner apply the laws of economics to understand everyday problems - such as why school teachers cheat and the reason behind the sudden fall in violent crime in the US. It’s a fascinating book and the inspiration behind my idea.

What does this have to do with machine learning?

I currently work at Amazon and class myself as being in the tech industry. Today anyone who’s anyone in this industry is talking about the power of AI and Machine Learning - I want to understand how I can apply machine learning techniques to understand the commonalities that make things successful, such as what defines a successful book (or blog), what makes a successful relationship? or a successful movement? I know right! Interesting, huh?

Currently there are just two minor blockers to my setting out on this mission:

1. I don’t know how to code

2. I have never written an ML (what we cool kids call Machine Learning) algorithm

But we live in the age of technology and there are infinite resources out there to learn new skills. Surely in this world of EdX, Coursera and YouTube, a little thing like having no technical knowledge about a subject won’t prevent me from achieving my dreams right?

Right???

I guess we’ll see.