Can computer scientists — the people who think about the foundations of computing and programming — help us to solve human problems such as having too many things to do, and not enough time in which to do them?

That’s the premise of Algorithms to Live By, a book by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths. It’s an appealing idea to any economist. We tend to think of everyday decisions as a branch of applied mathematics, which is what computer science is.

To be clear, using computer science is not the same as using computers. Computer scientists have devoted decades to problems such as sorting information, setting priorities and networking. Many of the algorithms they have developed for computers can also work for human beings. An algorithm, after all, is not a computer program. It’s a structured procedure, a kind of recipe. (Algorithms are named after a 9th-century Persian mathematician, Al-Khwārizmī, but they predate his work by thousands of years.)