Okay, so I’ve been messing around with this “stuff prediction” thing, and I gotta say, it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster. I’m no expert, just a guy who likes to tinker, so bear with me.
The Idea
First, I needed something to predict. I thought, “What’s something I always have too much or too little of?” And bam! Groceries. I’m always running out of milk or drowning in avocados. So, predicting my grocery needs seemed like a good, practical challenge.
Getting My Hands Dirty
I started simple. I grabbed a notebook and just started writing down what I bought each week. Like, literally everything. Milk, eggs, that weird cheese my wife likes, the whole shebang. After a few weeks, I had a decent-sized list. It wasn’t pretty, just a bunch of scribbled notes, but it was a start.
The First Attempt (Fail)
My first idea was super basic. I figured I could just average out my purchases over the past few weeks and use that as my prediction. So, if I bought two cartons of milk each week for three weeks, my prediction for the next week would be two cartons. Makes sense, right?
Wrong. Turns out, my grocery habits are way more random than I thought. One week I’d have friends over and buy tons of snacks, the next week I’d be eating mostly leftovers. My “average” prediction was almost always off.
Trying Something Smarter
I realized I needed something more… sophisticated. I’d heard about this “machine learning” thing, but it sounded intimidating. Still, I figured I’d give it a shot. I found some online tutorials and started playing around with some basic algorithms. It was confusing at first, lots of weird terms and confusing code, but I slowly started to get the hang of it.
I took my messy notebook data and typed it into a spreadsheet. Then, I used some online tools (I’m not gonna lie, I mostly just copied and pasted code from tutorials) to try and find patterns in my shopping habits.
Results (Kind Of)
The results were… interesting. The machine learning thingy did seem to pick up on some patterns. It noticed that I buy more snacks on weekends, and that I tend to buy more milk when I also buy cereal. Cool!
But, it wasn’t perfect. It still made some pretty wild predictions. Like, one time it told me I needed five jars of pickles. Five! I don’t even like pickles that much.
Where I’m At Now
So, I’m still working on it. I’m trying to tweak the algorithm, add more data, and generally just make it smarter. It’s a slow process, and I’m definitely making mistakes along the way. But, it’s also kind of fun. It’s like a puzzle, trying to figure out how to make this thing work.
I’m not sure if I’ll ever get to a point where I can perfectly predict my grocery needs. But, hey, even if I just get a little bit better at it, that’s a win in my book. Plus, I’m learning a lot along the way, and that’s always a good thing.
