It's perhaps important for people to understand that this type of problem is not necessarily a problem of hiring secretaries but rather a mathematical problem p

It's perhaps important for people to understand that this type of problem is not necessarily a problem of hiring secretaries but rather a mathematical problem presented in less abstract form that people can easier relate to and digest. There could be dozens of variations, one could involve being able to go back one decision point (change your mind on the previous candidate), one could be to use parallelism and multiple evaluators, one could be to not know the total number so you might have seen the last secretary ever, etc. Most real life problems will never perfectly match to this kind of math problem simply because real life usually offers more flexibility than a strictly defined mathematical scenario. Reminds me of the joke with the mathematician and the engineer who can take as many steps as they want to get to the pot of gold in front of them with the condition that every step is maximum half of the distance remaining. The mathematician is absolutely livid because he knows he'll never reach it, while the engineer is happy because he'll be there for all practical purposes.