Welcome to Engineered, where I take an inconsequential problem and do my very best to overthink the hell out of it using some combination of math, Excel, and coding. Today's topic: golf, or more specifically, is your favorite club (the driver) hurting you more than helping you? I don't play a lot of golf these…
In Part I of this two-part series I discussed the pros and cons of 15 and 30 year mortgage terms, which are the two most common types. The main benefit of shorter loan terms in general is less money paid in interest over the course of the loan. The main benefit of longer loan terms…
I've recently been trying to be a responsible adult and be more cognizant of my finances, which means that I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos on the subject. Back in high school, when I was more optimistic than I am now, I told myself that I would never get into debt. I figured I…
It was a Friday night and my friend and I were a few beers in. He was discussing his job and how they like to make a big deal about the fact that they are going "all digital" in some area, and in his inebriated state he stopped and asked "what does 'digital' even mean?"…
Some friends ask you to go out to dinner with them. It'll be fun, right? Well, if you're like me then it will unleash a living hell of anxiety in your brain. I've been to one or two large dinners in my life, and most of the time they are less than enjoyable experiences. Why?…
People often smugly use the term "common sense" to belittle people and make themselves feel better. "Ha! That's common sense, that person is an idiot for not knowing it!" But perhaps some tidbits of knowledge aren't as common as some people think. Everyone probably has a set of things that they think should be "common…
There are all too many motivational anecdotes about never giving up, and that's good and all, but I think there need to be more motivational anecdotes about knowing when to give up. This is one of them. On Saturday I made a goal: that I was going to attempt to cook shrimp gumbo. If you've never had…
Editor's note: this is the second installment in a series on Game Theory. If you are unfamiliar with The Prisoner's Dilemma, it is recommended that you read the intro to the series before diving into this post. From an economic standpoint, militaries are a huge waste of money. Countries around the world spend significant portions…
If you haven't seen A Beautiful Mind, then you may think the term "Game Theory" sounds like some geeky over-interpretation of video game strategies, but it is in fact a complex mathematical discipline that has a wide-ranging array of real-life applications. While many adults might not think a "game" is a very serious term, in the…
It was 4:45 a.m. on a warm, dry morning in the Southern Arizona desert. The fact that I had only gotten 4 hours of sleep had not yet caught up with me, because my mind was racing with what I would be doing for the next 24 hours. As of that moment, the plan I…