Pareto's Economic Theories Used To Find the Best Mario Kart 8 Racer

Data scientist Antoine Mayerowitz, PhD, applied Vilfredo Pareto's (the early 20th-century Italian economist) theories to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe to determine the best racer combinations. "When you break down the build options (including driver stats and various vehicle details) in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, there are over 700,000 possible combinations," notes Engadget. "But once you eliminate duplicates that differ only in appearance, you can narrow it down to 'only' 25,704 possibilities." From the report: Pareto's theories, most notably the Pareto front, help us navigate the complexities of choice. They can pinpoint the solutions with the most balanced strengths and the fewest trade-offs. Pareto's work is about efficiency and effectiveness. [...] Mayerowitz's Pareto front analysis lets you narrow your possibilities down to the 14 most efficient. And it turns out the game's top players were onto something: One of the combinations with the most ideal balance of speed, acceleration and mini-turbo is Cat Peach driving the Teddy Buggy, roller tires and cloud glider -- one already favored among Mario Kart 8 competitors.

Of course, if that combination isn't your cup of tea, there are others that allow you to stay within the Pareto front's optimal range. As Eurogamer points out, Donkey Kong, Wario (my old standby, mostly because he makes me laugh) and Princess Peach are often highlighted as drivers, and you can use Mayerowitz's data fields to find the best matching vehicles. Keep in mind that others have identical stats, so racers like Villager (female), Inkling Girl and Diddy Kong are separated only by appearances.

To find your ideal racer, you can head over to Mayerowitz's website. There, you can enter your most prized stats and view the combos that give you the best balance (those highlighted in yellow), according to Pareto's theories.

There's a name for this

[Luckyo]

"Minmaxing the fun out of the game".

Re:

[thegarbz]

Nope. The process of min-maxing creates its own fun, and fundamentally the game still requires a significant amount of skill. But I suppose you think Formula 1 isn't fun for the drivers since they all are required to drive cars which meet the same spec?

Re:

[Luckyo]

Formula 1 is actually a great example of mix maxing constantly going wrong from fun perspective, and series changing its rules to bring the previous people who min maxed the fun out of it back in line.

But it's also a bad example because of amount of money involved in min maxing in formula 1.

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[I-am-a-Banana]

I play occasionally with my son. He has been playing Mario Kart for years. He has his preferred combos based on track and how many CCs we are playing. He found this out through game play and getting to know the game.

Myself a long time gamer has not played Mario Kart much. I enjoy it. I don't have the advantage my son does with knowing the combos to choose. I do my best. Having something like this allows me to narrow things down so that I can have a better understanding in what I can pick to try and be compe

Re:

[Luckyo]

This is the casual take about casual play, misunderstanding the nature of minmaxing entirely.

God, what an obnoxious content scroll

[Sowelu]

I miss the early days of the web, when people didn't do this (as much). One sentence per screen? Bollocks.

Re:

[Ed Avis]

Many browsers have a reading mode which simplifies out the excessive styling. But Firefox's reading mode (F9) loses the images too.

Re:

[thegarbz]

Given this screen is completely interactive reading mode doesn't help you at all.

"Duplicates that differ only in appearance"

[Ed Avis]

So what are the characters that differ only in appearance? I normally play as Iggy, but he doesn't appear in the article's charts, so I assume his stats are identical to some other character.

Re:

[Ed Avis]

Ah, I see you can hover over the characters in the chart to see their equivalents. Iggy is equivalent to Luigi and Kamek.

The third Italian

[Provocateur]

He's the one staring at all the cameras, making a move when you try to.game the system. He's not a brother, but he's family