Read week 2’s lecture. Have a fictional persona in mind — reused from
tutorial 1 or invented fresh. Bring their most romantically inefficient
search habit; you will be asked to defend it in cost-function terms.
Working in pairs, pick one persona and sketch two different discovery
channels for them as cost functions: time per candidate, signal quality,
how often a promising lead turns out not to be one. Put the two side by
side and find the one number that’s different enough to flip the optimal
strategy — screen harder before meeting, or say yes sooner. Swap with
another pair and check that your “flipping number” survives their
challenge.
This is deliberately not “how to use dating apps better.” The channel is a
parameter, not the point — the point is being able to say precisely which
number changed and which decision it changed.
A fictional persona — reused from tutorial 1, or invented fresh
Two different discovery channels in mind for them (an app, a friend group, a workplace)
What happens in the room
Pairs pick one persona and sketch two channels as cost functions: cost per candidate, signal quality, false-positive rate
Put the two cost functions side by side and find the one number that's different enough to flip the strategy
Swap with another pair and pressure-test whether that 'flipping number' actually holds
You leave with two written cost functions and a named number that changes the stopping rule between them
The spec
What you bring to the session. Written so a reader can tell whether it has been met without asking you.
you've modeled a fictional persona's discovery channel as a cost function — rough cost per candidate, signal quality, false-positive rate — even if the numbers are guesses, they're written down
you've done the same for a second, different channel for the same persona, so two cost functions sit side by side, not one
you can point to the specific number that differs between the two and say which stopping rule it flips, not just that "the strategy changes"