The “Secretary Problem,” also known as the “Optimal Stopping Problem,” is an example of decision theory. It deals with the challenge of making the best choice (like hiring the best candidate or picking a life partner,) when options must be evaluated sequentially and decisions are irreversible.
Some of us would say it also applies to online dating. One should skip all of the first 37 percent of profiles. Then one picks the first candidate afterward that tops the best "score" of the first 37 percent of profiles.
Even then, the odds of getting a second date are said to range around 20 percent. It's a tough business!
The classic example is hiring a candidate for a secretary position. Interviews are sequential, and after each interview, you must either hire that candidate immediately or reject them permanently.
Your goal is to maximize the probability of hiring the best (highest-ranked) candidate overall.
The theorem suggests that the hiring team literally skip the first 37 percent of candidates without hiring anyone, while scoring them. So for a universe of 1,000 candidates, one skips the first 370, before picking the very next candidate that "scores" better than the top candidate of the prior 370!
Then, the team “should” hire the first candidate thereafter who is better than all the ones you've seen.
Mathematically, this strategy maximizes the probability of picking the very best candidate, and this success probability approaches 1/e (~37%) as n → ∞.
Applications might include online dating, choosing a life partner (the "marriage problem"), real estate decisions, investment decisions or possibly even parking space selection.
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