2 ms·
What happens if the best apartment you could have looked at was the first one, which you rejected because you hadn't seen enough by that point. Following the a
by pcthrowaway 4y ago
What happens if the best apartment you could have looked at was the first one, which you rejected because you hadn't seen enough by that point.
Following the above heuristic, isn't there a chance you never look at another apartment that would be "better than the others you've looked at" once you enter the decision window, and therefore keep looking until you reach N and have to take the last option?
(the implications for dating should be obvious here, with it being fairly common for young lovers to break up so they can "see what's out there", and not uncommon for people to reach an age where they feel the need to settle for "what they can get" at that point)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- eru 4y ago> Following the above heuristic, isn't there a chance you never look at another apartment that would be "better than the others you've looked at" once you enter the decision window, and therefore keep looking until you reach N and have to take the last option? Yes, obviously. As Wikipedia says: > The probability of selecting the best applicant in the classical secretary problem converges toward 1/e ~ 0.368. The classic solution to the classic secretary problem works in less than 37% of cases. But in reality, you tend to know a bit about the distribution beforehand, and you are also interested in getting eg the second best secretary (if the best is no longer available), instead of just going for best-or-bust.