Article URL: https://www.mayerowitz.io/blog/mario-meets-pareto Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49195231 Points: 188 # Comments: 36

In Mario Kart 8, choosing your driver, kart's body, tires, and glider isn't just about style — it's as crucial as your racing skills to win a race. Ever wondered how to truly find the best ones? For each of those four elements, you have tens of options. For each option, there are distinct statistics (speed, acceleration, ...) affecting your performance. Hopefully, many choices are just stylistic — they have identical statistics — but even after ignoring those duplicates, it remains a tough job to navigate the thousands of options. Is there any chance to find the best build or is it just luck? Should you favor speed to be the fastest, or acceleration to quickly recover after taking a hit? Let me show you a solution proposed over a century ago by economist Vilfredo Pareto. Finding the fastest driver is as simple as ranking them by their speed statistic. Here you might think that Bowser or Wario are a no-brainer. But you can't just rely on speed to find the optimal build. You have to consider one as well. Now, finding the best driverbodytireglider is not trivial anymore — you have to make trade-offs between speedaccelerationhandlingweightoffroadmini turbo and speedaccelerationhandlingweightoffroadmini turbo Reset Look closely though! You'll find out that some options are always dominated. Let's focus on this poor Koopa for instance. Cat Peach has more speed for the same acceleration, and Toadette has more acceleration for the same speed. Between you and me, if you want to win, never allow Koopa to sit in your kart!