One afternoon in 2009, I pulled an old book on optimization from a shelf in the library at Sun Yat-sen University. It had been donated from the United States. That shelf was part of a larger history: Gregory C. Chow (邹至庄), Lingnan College’s first honorary dean, had helped bring modern economics textbooks and well-trained faculty to the college. His work put new ideas within reach of students like me.

The book posed a question: Why does light bend when it enters water? A straight path is shorter, but a bent path can take less time. Light seemed to be solving a problem: finding the quickest way through the world. I was struck by the thought that a familiar sight could reveal a principle beneath it. Natural science searches for the principles that govern the physical world. I began to wonder whether the choices of people, organizations, and businesses might also have a logic beneath their apparent disorder. What guides a decision made under uncertainty, incentives, or new technology?

That question led me to research. Human choices can look random, and finding a common principle that helps predict them is hard. I believe careful study can reveal patterns and that those patterns can help us make better decisions in business, society, and public policy. Newton is said to have pictured himself as a child on the seashore while “the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” I remember the feeling I had in that library: the joy of finding one small clue, and the desire to see what lay beyond it.